Permutation
by gsteemso
Summary: Ranma, while in the Cat Fist, is rescued and healed by the Sailor Senshi. Shame about the amnesia and, wow, hasn't anybody ever been nice to this guy? Rated M just to be safe.
1. Chapter 1

**Permutation**

A Ranma ½ / Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon crossover  
© 2004–2009 by gsteemso

Chapter One

Author's notes (updated Sat. 2008/04/26):

I will be giving all personal names in Japanese order (family name first), because that's what the names _are._ However, everything else will be in English unless I can't find a reliable translation, because that's the only language I have in common with most of my readers. Among other things, this means: Girl-Ranma, not Onna-Ranma; Happosai is referred to as a pervert, rather than a hentai; and so on.

When I started this story, I followed the above guideline perhaps a little too enthusiastically, and translated even the component words in place names (whoops). While there is still no place called "Juuban" in Tokyo, and the word itself does mean "number ten in a sequence," the proper name of the area in Minato ward (translated literally, "Harbour" ward) that the Sailor Moon cast frequent appears to be "Azabu-Jūban" (just like the local subway station), even in English. (Thank you, Google Maps Japan.) My previous use of "Tenth District" was extremely incorrect, and I apologize for any confusion or unintended absurdity that may have arisen.

Of the _intended_ absurdities, of course, I remain wholly unrepentant. One such is my brazen relocation of the Tokyo outer suburb called Nerima, within the fictional Furinkan district of which _Ranma ½_ is set, to be adjacent to the noticeably more built-up and expensive Minato ward. I claim artistic license.

_Permutation_ is set post-canon in the manga continuum for both series. However, although I have done considerable research on it and I have even been sent a scanslated copy, I've never actually read the Sailor Moon manga (and, considering the reputed low quality of the English translation, have little desire to), so if I screw up please let me know so I can fix it.

I understand that "senshi" translates approximately as "soldier," but for some reason everyone tends to call them "Sailor Scouts" instead. As "Sailor Soldiers" sounds a bit less silly, I will be using that in this story. (Yes, this is a reversal of my original policy.)

Not my characters — Ranma ½ belongs to Takahashi Rumiko and Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon belongs to Takeuchi Naoko.

* * *

.

* * *

It was around 4 PM on a beautiful afternoon in the late summer, in the Tokyo ward named Minato. On a bus headed for the Minato Zoo, a pretty girl named Tendo Akane was reflecting — with a certain degree of disbelief — on the chain of events that had led to her being there. First, she had found a ticket for the zoo in her diary when she came home from school an hour previously, along with a note telling her how to get out of Nerima ward without notice being taken of it. She had been inclined to ignore it as one of her older sister Nabiki's schemes — which, however optimistically one tried to view the matter, tended to be rather "ethically challenged" — but then she had seen her fiancé Saotome Ranma, wearing quite a good disguise, disappear using an advanced martial arts technique, and her eldest sister Kasumi waving at him as he left! Kasumi had then looked at her with a greatly dismayed expression and asked, "Why are you still here? Nabiki will be home in less than ten minutes! Didn't you look in your diary?"

That had been surreal. _Kasumi,_ of all people?

However, she'd managed to overcome the urge to look a gift horse in the mouth long enough to escape Nerima unobserved, and had since concluded that it would be nice to have an afternoon with Ranma and without all their rivals. She just hoped that he would be in one of his less childish moods — they'd both come close enough to accidentally revealing their true feelings for each other that she no longer felt quite as insecure towards him, and when he felt the same way enough to respond to her as a teenager would, rather than a twelve-year-old, they both felt on top of the world. Of course, she still occasionally found it necessary to chastise him for what she thought were womanizing ways.

Meanwhile, a few dozen blocks away, a bandanna-wearing boy bounded across the rooftops on a direct line from the Tendo house to the same zoo. This was Saotome Ranma, fairly convincingly disguised as his friend and greatest rival, Hibiki Ryoga. He was just as surprised at Kasumi's plan as Akane, but agreed with her that it was a good idea. His disguise would be shot if anyone noticed that he wasn't apparently lost yet, but no one was watching him for long enough to tell, so he soon arrived safely, with no one the wiser.

The admissions lady took his ticket and waved him through, and he quickly ducked into a washroom to shed his disguise. Emerging a few moments later, he scanned the crowd and realized there was a minor hiccup in the plan. Where was he supposed to meet Akane? Looking around again, this time at the buildings, he saw a tallish structure further into the zoo that looked like it would command a good view of the grounds around the entrance, and bounded off towards it.

Vexingly, there were no other buildings nearby to use as stepping stones — just a tall hedge that concealed most of the building and its grounds from view. Ranma was on the back side of it, in a different zone of the zoo that was devoted to large herbivores like yaks and reindeer. He wasn't sure what the building was for, but he thought he'd seen a lot of birds on the other side of the hedge while bounding towards it, so he ignored the whole subject in favour of figuring the best way to get to the roof. He soon settled on a running jump, and in mere moments discovered his mistake: The building had a false front that extended all the way around it, and he, having jumped over this, was now plunging helplessly towards a glass roof over some kind of large animal pens.

Naturally, it was the back of the tiger exhibit.

The tigers were not pleased to be showered in bits of broken glass. They approached the strange ærial she-human in their swimming pool and complained about it.

Ranma… _meowed._

* * *

Meanwhile, at the front of the tiger exhibit, a handsome man wearing a sequinned vest was explaining to a small but enthralled audience how tigers were tamed for the circus, with the aid of various props such as a bullwhip and a large, bloody steak. At one end of the front row, Tsukino Usagi and her friends Aino Minako, Hino Rei, Kino Makoto and Tomoe Hotaru hung on his every word. They were secretly the Sailor Soldiers Moon, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, respectively, enjoying a rare afternoon off.

They'd come just to see the tamer of big cats, on the slightly boy-crazed recommendation of Minako and Makoto, and so far were quite happy they had. Their comrades Mizuno Ami, Ten'ō Haruka, Kaiō Michiru, and Meiō Setsuna — respectively, Sailors Mercury, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto — had been variously unable to come, or else not particularly interested, and sent their regrets. Hotaru, being the youngest by several years, hadn't been especially interested in the trainer's manly attributes either, but had come along anyway on the grounds that she needed to get out more.

The show was about half over when, suddenly, there came a faint crashing noise from the back of the exhibit. A few minutes later, the show was abruptly cancelled as several frightened tigers came running out, at full speed, as though there were a demon at their heels. The crowd screamed as both they and the tigers realized the wall was not high enough to restrain a truly terrified big cat, and within seconds the chaos was total. The off-duty Sailors quickly ducked behind the hedge they were sitting next to, and made it into the lee of the foliage, up against the building. A few seconds of pushing and some unladylike swearwords got them far enough in that no one could see them, and they quickly transformed to their Sailor identities.

"I counted four tigers. You guys go after them and I'll try to calm down the crowd. Go!" cried Sailor Moon, who had transformed directly to her Eternal form after forming her plan on the way into the hedge. The others split up and headed after the tigers. Moon concentrated on projecting an aura of peace and confidence as she addressed the crowd. Soon she'd arrested the wave of panic — due in no small part to the tigers having each left as soon as they found a way out — and she was just about to leave to help with the roundup, when something in the now-empty tiger pit caught her eye.

It was a redheaded girl who appeared to be in her early teens, wearing baggy clothing. Inexplicably, it looked almost like she was covered in fine cuts and lacerations, and — and this was _really_ strange — she was walking on all fours, and doing it so casually, it almost looked more natural to her than walking upright!

Eternal Sailor Moon boggled at her. How had she gotten in there? And was that _blood?_

* * *

Ranma-the-cat was not happy. She was wet and covered in small cuts, she was in a strange place outside of her territory, and not only was her mate conspicuously absent, so was everyone else she knew! Not finding any other way to go, she wandered aimlessly after the Other Cats she'd chased off. She soon emerged into a bright sunny place outdoors, which seemed like a positive start. She poked around the tiger stage long enough to make certain no one familiar could be scented, and was just finishing when a shouting figure in khakis impinged on her awareness. She puffed herself up and hissed, but that didn't seem to work very well; the shouter merely called over more shouters. She was starting to feel hemmed in, and began seeking a good place to jump to on the wall above them.

Who was _that?_ Her aura spoke to Ranma's feline mind of warm laps, and a mother cat's caring petting. Ranma, cat or otherwise, had a powerful desire to be mothered when she felt as lousy as she currently felt, though she almost never let herself show it. As her human perspective was not around to foul things up with shyness or excessive machismo, there wasn't even a decision to be made, really. With a joyous "Prrp!" noise — which meant, "Mommy!" — Ranma-the-cat bounded over the astounded zookeepers and landed on the wall next to Eternal Sailor Moon, who backed away a few steps with some alarm.

The blonde superheroine stopped when the strange girl looked beseechingly at her and meowed piteously. "Do— do you need help?" she asked hesitantly.

"Mrraow!" replied Ranma-the-cat brightly, with the kind of authority that only a cat can manage. She hopped down off the wall and came closer. Sailor Moon stood her ground, watching carefully. The strange girl was obviously not herself, but didn't seem to be dangerous. Still, was she what the tigers had fled from? Sailor Moon may not have been running away, but she wasn't exactly relaxed either.

Just then, the other Sailors returned, the zookeepers having taken the tigers off their hands. They came around the corner of the hedge that marked the pathway past all the exhibits, just in time to see a faintly blood-covered lunatic on all fours hop off the wall at Sailor Moon — whose body language stated emphatically that she would rather not be in its way. They broke out into a run, crying out to Sailor Moon as they went.

Ranma-the-cat was spooked. Loud, powerful strangers, running right at her! She decided she didn't feel like fighting until she had a nap and something to eat, preferably in a familiar place, and ducked behind the one with the friendly aura. (Give her a solid meal, mind you, and she'd love a good challenge; but none seemed to be forthcoming.)

The onrushing Sailors saw her change in behaviour and relaxed. It was hard to think of the strange girl as a threat when she was hiding behind Sailor Moon and blinking owlishly at them around the other side of the Pretty Soldier's knees. They pulled up a few paces short so as not to spook the girl any further, and began trying to talk to her. They naturally enough completely failed to elicit any kind of human response, and were baffled as to what they should do next, when Saturn hit on the idea of treating her as the cat she obviously thought she was.

"Hey there kitty cat, wanna be friends? Prrrroww? Here, kitty, kitty…" she asked, hunkering down in front of Ranma-the-cat and gently extending her knuckles to be sniffed.

"Come on, Saturn, that can't possibly wor— good GODS, it DID," said Sailor Mars, watching Ranma-the-cat cautiously sniff Saturn's hand and then tentatively rub her cheek up against the Sailor's knees, purring hesitantly. The cat-girl squeaked and pulled back, looking miserable, as the little and not-so-little glass cuts all down her side and arms protested this treatment.

"Awww, the poor thing's all hurt!" said Saturn, and gently reached down with faintly radiant hands to heal the cuts.

The purring came back, much louder than before, and Ranma-the-cat fairly glowed with joy as the other Sailors all gently began petting her too. These people may have been powerful, but they obviously meant her no harm. Weird, but she wasn't about to complain.

"Hmm, I wonder…" said Jupiter, looking around. She quickly spotted an abandoned balloon-on-a-string vendor's cart a short way off, and borrowed a length of twine from it. When she came back, she tried dangling the string for the cat-girl to chase.

Sure enough, the twitching end of it was eagerly pounced on by the redhead, who was grinning almost from ear to ear by this point. The way she somehow managed to shred the pavement where she came down, as well as the string, was rather sobering for the Sailors. While Ranma-the-cat hadn't apparently touched the ground yet at the precise moment of its laceration, it pretty much had to have been her that did it, so none of them felt too inclined to treat her as a cuddly house pet any more.

"Is she a monster in disguise? But she's so friendly and shy!" said Venus, voicing the confusion they all shared.

"I saw her aura flare when she did that. The outer part just past her fingertips — which is what did the cutting, I think — it was practically blinding, it was so bright. She's got way stronger chi than a normal girl should… but it felt normal, not evil or corrupt like a demon's would have," put in Mars. "Come to think of it, it looks a lot more… ordered? …than most auras do, too. I'm sure I've seen that somewhere before, but where?" she mused, half to herself.

A little ways off, Sailor Jupiter was trying to stop Ranma-the-cat from picking up the longest fragment of string in her mouth, but with the necessary precaution of staying out of the invisible claws' range, Jupiter wasn't having a lot of luck. Fortunately, the redhead seemed to be treating her attempts at dissuasion as some sort of game of tag. Less fortunately, the ground wasn't terribly clean where Ranma-the-cat was trying to close her teeth on the string. Finally, Jupiter gave up and picked the thing up herself, this time dangling it in the air in front of the cat-girl rather than on the pavement, in hopes that it would last longer that way.

"Possession victims?" suggested Saturn uncertainly, distracted by the disconcerting sight of Ranma-the-cat rolling on her back in order to use all four limbs to swat at the end of the string.

"Mmm, no, I doubt it. The added structure with those is all dark and twisted, I mean really _wrong,_ on so many levels… What I'm seeing with kitty-girl here is GOOD GRIEF!" Ranma-the-cat had just manifested a full set of hind claws as well as the ones on her hands, to the shrine maiden's consternation, which quickly spread to the others as they figured out what they were looking at. (While only Sailor Mars could actually see the claw-shaped modifications to Ranma-the-cat's chi flows at toe- and fingertips, the others could discern eye-wateringly faint ripples in the air if they looked hard enough.) "Um, that is, everything about her aura just screams 'health and vitality'. It's not twisted into the _wrong_ order like with a possession victim, it's like… almost the normal pattern, but taken to a ridiculous extreme of high intensity and definition." Mars gave the upside-down cat-girl a puzzled look.

After a short pause while they all digested this, Jupiter suggested, "Maybe she's a normal girl that something happened to?"

Even as she spoke, Ranma-the-cat succeeded in yanking the string out of her fingers, and rolled onto one side to gnaw on it, making happy but possessive little growly noises as she chewed. (Any readers who have ever heard a cat, forced by circumstance to share a large kill, will know exactly what she sounded like.)

"That's got my vote. We should get her away from here and try to help her. Use the string, she should follow it," decided Sailor Venus.

"Come on, we're drawing a crowd," agreed Moon, wincing as the redhead swallowed a big shred of the rapidly dwindling string.

After a brief delay while they determined that the string was in an extremely posthumous condition and rustled up a replacement, the five girls who were magical and the one girl who was a cat (and also magical, or at least cursed) quickly made good their escape from the public eye. They came to rest soon after on the broad expanse of roofing over the aquarium exhibits, in a low spot where no one could see them. The Sailors took seats on a cluster of squat HVAC units and proceeded to argue about the cat-girl, who meanwhile was rubbing up against their legs and trying to get them interested in either petting her or playing with the string again.

Abruptly, she leapt into Moon's lap, purring loudly, and curled up. "What do I do⁈" squeaked Sailor Moon. "What if she starts to knead, with those _claws?"_

"Don't push her off, she might try to claw into your lap to keep her balance!" said Mars, urgently.

"What if we help her right now, before anything bad has time to happen?" asked Saturn.

"Huh?" asked everyone else.

"If I try to use my healing on her head and Sailor Moon helps me with the Silver Crystal, we might be able to bring her back to herself!" explained Saturn eagerly.

"Worth a shot glass in the night, I guess," said Venus. The others ignored the hideously mangled figure of speech with hardly any wincing at all.

Just then, Ranma-the-cat rolled over in Moon's lap, hands and feet curled up above her, with a huge smile on her face and still purring loudly. She appeared to be hoping the Pretty Soldier would rub her… let's just call it her belly. "Whew!" said the deeply embarrassed Sailor Moon, pulling out the Silver Crystal with impressive speed. "Quick, let's do it now while it's safe!"

One display of powerful sparkly lights later, Ranma-no-longer-a-cat sprang ramrod-straight in her position across Moon's lap, and before anyone could recover enough from their startlement to catch her, promptly rolled off onto the roof in a painful-looking manner.

"Unconscious, but her pulse is okay," reported Jupiter, kneeling beside the stricken redhead.

"I suddenly have this sinking feeling we goofed. Shouldn't she be awake?" asked Saturn, with trepidation.

"You'd think so," replied Moon, looking concernedly at the girl sprawled awkwardly at her feet.

Mars suggested, "Let's do what we should have done first, and try a fire reading or ask Pluto or something."

"Good plan. Let's do a Sailor Teleport to Saturn's house and ask Pluto," said Venus decisively. The others agreed, and it was quickly done.

* * *

Akane was becoming very worried. The bus had gotten her to the zoo just in time to see a pair of tranquillized tigers get hauled away on carts, right out in the middle of all the people. She'd been relieved at first that there was no sign of a terrified Ranma, and decided to go check where the tiger exhibit was so they could avoid it on their date when he did show up. Then, to her astonished distress, she'd come around a corner only to see a female Ranma-the-cat merrily chasing some Sailor Soldiers into the convoluted roofline over the marine animal exhibits, far enough away that she knew she had no hope of catching up. Seeing an urban legend come to life was all well and good, though not very exciting compared to the chaos that swirled around Furinkan district on a regular basis, but she knew it couldn't be a good thing that Ranma-the-cat had apparently decided they were his lunch.

Akane continued trying to find out from the other eyewitnesses where the Sailors might have headed to, but she knew in her heart it was hopeless.

* * *

With a gentle _pfmf_ of equalizing air pressure, five girls in indecently short skirts and one unconscious girl in really baggy Chinese silks appeared in Hotaru's bedroom. The Sailors quickly dropped their transformations before their erstwhile passenger could wake up and ask awkward questions, laid her carefully on the bed, and fanned out to look for Setsuna, Sailor Pluto.

Setsuna was nowhere to be found, in uniform or out of it. They met back in Hotaru's room to decide what to do instead.

Makoto suggested, "Maybe we could take her to Ami's mom at the hospital?"

"Would they be able to do anything about a magically induced state of unconsciousness, though?" wondered Rei.

The point quickly became moot, as a loud groan brought all eyes to bear on the former cat-girl they'd rescued.

"You're awake! Can you sit up?" asked Minako, who was closest.

"Glrzbv… ungh… oggg… Er. Hhhhhk. Hhheh. Hhel-hello?" said the girl on the bed, groggily, as though working out from scratch how to assemble the sounds of speech using a human throat.

"Oh, goody! You're talking now, instead of meowing. Can you remember anything?" asked Usagi.

There was a short pause while the girl thought about that, an increasingly baffled and distraught expression forming on her face. "No! Nothing! Do any of you know who I am?" she burst out desperately.

The other five girls all looked worriedly back and forth, silently asking one another how they could possibly answer their luckless guest when each of them was entirely too aware they didn't know her from a hole in the ground. After a few awkward moments of this, Minako belatedly put on a reassuring smile and said, "Well, we don't know your name, but SOMEBODY out there has to, and we'll help you find it. It's just a matter of time, right?"

"Yeah!" chimed in Usagi. She was about to continue, when it became obvious that something weighty had occurred to the amnesiac she was addressing.

"Umm… if you don't know me, how did I get in your bedroom? It's not familiar at ALL, so I doubt it's mine…" The nameless girl was looking rather apprehensive, glancing suspiciously from side to side as though expecting a nasty surprise at any moment.

Makoto hastened to set the girl's mind at ease. "We were asked to look after you by the Sailor Soldiers… you were, um, not exactly yourself when they found you."

" 'Sailor Soldiers?' " the girl asked skeptically.

"They're, ah, kind of the local magical girls," supplied Rei carefully. "They kill demons and rescue people, and save the world and stuff like that."

"Oh." The still anonymous Ranma looked a bit lost at this, as indeed she would have even with her memory intact. Magical girls were something more or less entirely outside her experience, as even the fictional ones were generally to be found in manga aimed at young girls — a type of literature which Ranma would ordinarily not be caught dead near, out of the absolute certainty that someone would misinterpret the situation and develop an inappropriately extreme reaction.

Seeing that their guest really didn't know how to take that, and not liking to see anyone worry more than they needed to, Hotaru piped up with, "Don't worry, you'll be okay with us! We may not know your name, but we're really good at taking care of people!"

Unfortunately, bringing attention back to their complete lack of any knowledge of the stranger wasn't the best possible move. Despite herself, the ex-cat-girl in question was just short of panicking as she thought her situation through. "Where will I go? I don't even know my own name, I can't find where I live without any clues!"

"For the moment, you can stay here," said a new voice from the doorway.

"Michiru-mama!" exclaimed Hotaru happily. Parents always know what to do, right?

"Oh, thank you so much!" cried the girl, blowing out a huge sigh of relief. "I didn't know what to do!"

Michiru didn't disappoint as a parental figure, and immediately began laying out solutions. "Setsuna, our other housemate, works at Hotaru's school, and she should be able to find out if you're in the education ministry's computers anywhere. In the meantime, we should pick a name for you. 'Hey, you!' just lacks that certain something, I find."

"She's Koneko!" said Usagi at once.

"Ixnay!" hissed Rei behind the redhead's back.

"'Kitten?' Why would you name me after one of those evil little monsters?" the girl wondered.

"Just calling you 'cat' would be kinda weird, but 'kitten' is — wait a minute, since when are kittens bad?" Usagi was puzzled. Still behind amnesiac-Ranma's back, Rei clapped her hands to her head in frustration. Usagi didn't notice.

"I just don't like them. I don't know why, I just know they're evil," said the girl.

"Well, if cat names are out, we'll have to think of something better. Why don't you go get cleaned up, and we can think of names for you to pick from while you do that?" suggested Michiru. "I'm sure you'd feel better showered and in clean clothes."

This idea met with general acclaim, and Hotaru enthusiastically dragged the still nameless redhead out of the room to show her the facilities.

Michiru waited with one ear cocked at the hallway until they were out of earshot, and then addressed the others. "Now maybe you can explain what's going on that you couldn't say over our communicators."

"Yes, we were wondering too," said the newly arrived Ami, following Haruka in from the hallway.

"I mean… cats? What's up with that?" added Haruka.

The four Inners who'd been at the zoo managed to get the important points across by the time Hotaru came back a few minutes later, looking a bit confused. "Mama? Papa? Why would a bathroom make somebody nervous?"

"Huh?" said everyone.

"What do you mean?" asked Michiru.

"She got kind of twitchy and said the shower-bath made her nervous. She didn't know why," explained Hotaru.

"Simply put, conditioning from about a year and a half of having 'water' come to imply 'humiliation and misery' whenever she encountered it," came a voice from behind Usagi.

"Eeeeek!" she screamed, whirling around. "Don't DO that!"

Setsuna merely cocked an eyebrow and continued. "Her name is Saotome Ranma, she is one of the best martial artists in the world, and although she seems not to realize it, she has been mistreated for most of her life, usually in the name of training or honour. The worst thing that was ever done to her is that body she was wearing. She's really a boy who is cursed to flip genders when doused with water — cold water makes him female, hot makes her male—"

A gut-wrenching scream of terror echoed through the house from the bathroom, serving as a backdrop to the tableau of horrified expressions in Hotaru's room.

"—like that," Setsuna finished sadly.

* * *

The nine girls piled to a halt outside the bathroom door, through which it could be heard that the water had stopped — but, to judge by the gibbering and sobbing, the terror had not. The younger of them automatically looked to the three older girls for guidance — the person on the other side of the door needed their help, but was probably a naked male. A certain amount of indecision resulted.

"Only one or two of us should go in. A horde of strangers will throw him even further off balance," said Setsuna quietly.

"Me and Hotaru. I certainly don't care about a guy's privates and Hotaru was the one he saw most of before he got in the shower," said Haruka crisply. "You can look the other way," she added to the furiously blushing Hotaru.

"It's all right! We know what happened to you! Hotaru's coming in to help you!" called Michiru through the door, as encouragingly as possible. The gibbering stopped, though the sobbing didn't change.

Haruka led Hotaru into the bathroom, pushing the door to behind her but not latching it. "It'll be okay," said Hotaru gently, her concern overriding her shyness sufficiently for her to wrap one arm around the huddled emotional wreck in the shower stall. It helped that he was balled up so tightly that nothing embarrassing was visible.

"How can it be okay? I'm a freak!" sobbed the amnesiac Ranma, miserably. "I don't even know if I'm a girl or a guy!"

"Really? Neither body feels wrong to you at all?" asked Haruka, surprised.

Ranma pulled himself together a bit at that, and thought about it while absently wiping some of the tears away. "No," he said finally, looking a bit puzzled. "So which am I? You must know, you knew what happened to me."

"You started off as a guy, but it sounds like you've grown since then. Now you're _both."_

"Doesn't that make me a freak? No one else changes like this, do they?" Ranma felt very, very lost, small and most of all **alone**, despite Hotaru hugging him.

"I think it makes you very special," Hotaru said shyly. "Do you want to be friends?"

Ranma looked at her incredulously. She smiled and nodded. Ranma's tears started flowing again, this time with relief and gratitude. "Yeah, Hotaru-chan, I'd like that a lot," he said huskily, smiling tremulously. Then he looked at Haruka, nervously.

"I'd like us to be friends, too," she smiled. He smiled back, a bit more firmly this time.

"Awww!" said the Inners, watching from the gap in the door.

Ranma suddenly realized he was naked and in a bathtub with two girls, with a whole pile of other girls watching. Reflexes took over. "Aack! I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" He cringed back into a ball again, this time with his arms over his head. Hotaru let go of him in surprise.

"Huh?" "What happened?" the girls asked each other.

"Er, why are you apologizing?" asked Hotaru, hesitantly.

"Um… I'm, ah, in the bathtub and there's GIRLS and I didn't mean to be naked ACK I said it! I'm sorry, I'm sorry, please don't hit me…" He trailed off into incoherent mumbling. The Sailors developed a variety of dismayed and worried expressions.

" 'Humiliation and misery'… maybe from abuse?" muttered Ami to herself.

"Here's a towel," offered Haruka, feeling awfully ineffectual.

"I know!" said Usagi brightly. She came in and briefly turned the shower on Ranma, with cold water. Then she gently pulled her to her feet and helped Hotaru wrap the towel around her. "See? No one can get mad at you, we're all girls here and you're covered. Anyway, I wouldn't hit you, that's mean. Will you be my friend too?"

Ranma stared at her searchingly, totally thrown. "You… _really?"_

"Really," she smiled. "We all want to be friends with you, right girls?"

"Yeah!" they all chorused.

Ranma was amazed. "I, I don't know what to say. I'm so happy! Thank you all!" she said emotionally. "Only—"

"Yes?"

"Do any of you know what my name is?"

* * *

A little while later, Ranma had been named to herself and persuaded to have another go at the shower. The Sailors piled into the kitchen to talk about their unexpected charge while Michiru, aided by Makoto, made food for everyone.

Minako started the discussion with a question they all wanted the answer to. "Setsuna, why did he expect us to hit him back there? WE walked in on HIM, not the other way around!"

"I have to admit, that one I'm not sure about. When I looked at his recent past in the Time Gates, I did notice that he seems to get attacked quite often, and that one of the girls he lives with often calls him a pervert for no obvious reason. Maybe she did something to him once." Out of long habit, Setsuna was careful not to reveal too much about how the Gates actually worked as she spoke.

Truth be told, however, the ancient artefact was a lot harder to use than most who knew of its existence would expect, partly because it could open onto any_where_ as well as any_when_. Also, while the view through the Gates could be moved around a bit once they were open, in space if not in time, technical reasons made it almost impossible to exert particularly fine-grained control over the precise time, location and orientation of that initial opening. All of this meant that trying to get a useful summary of one person's life, using the damn thing, usually took at least half as long as just watching the individual in question live their life in real time. Even at her most bored, Sailor Pluto had never had that kind of time to spare.

"Did you have anything else important to tell us about him? You were interrupted earlier," reminded Ami.

"Thank you. I was getting to that. I told you he was treated very shabbily for much of his life, generally in the name of training or honour. The feline mental state you originally found him in was the result of a botched martial arts training exercise in his childhood. The technique, called the Cat-Fist, was originally intended to create a more controllable type of berserk, but it was banned decades ago because it drove the subjects insane. Ranma's dislike of cats is a natural result of being repeatedly thrown into a pit of starving ones while tied up with fish products, when he was only a child."

There was a shocked silence. Hotaru, her eyes wide, leaned up against Haruka for comfort. Finally, in hushed tones, Usagi said, "That's horrible!"

Ami spoke up again. "Please tell me the rest of it's not that bad? You haven't explained how a person can be abused in the name of honour…"

Setsuna sighed. "I wish I could say that, Ami. He seems to have been engaged multiple times by his father, often in exchange for small amounts of food or money, such that he cannot choose any of them without dishonouring the others and himself. To make matters worse, his personal honour is the only thing he truly owns. Losing it would be the final blow to his sense of self-worth. If he were less naturally optimistic or a less determined fighter, I think he would have committed seppuku some time ago, as the only way to appease everyone's honour. Mind you, he seems to cope with it all remarkably well by simply not thinking about it… of course, that causes its own set of problems."

Setsuna left unsaid that she only knew about the horrors of Ranma's upbringing by the fluke of having opened the Gates onto a time when Ranma was telling his mother about them, and then making a series of educated guesses about where and when else to look. A reputation for omniscience was hard to maintain sometimes, especially since the actual focus of her powers was the defence of Time from external manipulation, not espionage or performing such manipulation herself.

"That's horrible, too!" said Minako. "As Sailor Venus, the Soldier of Love, I can't stand by and do nothing. I will help him and those poor girls who are trapped along with him!"

"I really feel for him. He looked so lost and alone in the bathroom. I want to help him too," said Ami.

"We can all help him!" enthused Usagi. "With all nine of us working at it, there's no problem we can't solve!"

* * *

In a disused office building on a military air base in the American Midwest, the Murphy's Law Gremlin suddenly developed a splitting headache and an intense desire to get drunk, as an unwelcome sensation that it had an awful lot of work to do in the near future abruptly came over it…

* * *

.

* * *

END PART ONE

_Latest revision as of Weds. 2008/04/09_


	2. Chapter 2

**Permutation**

A Ranma ½ / Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon crossover  
© 2004–2009 by gsteemso

Chapter Two

Author's notes (updated Tues. 2007/02/06):

It has been brought to my attention that the original Nodoka is not nearly as loony as most Westerners think. Oops.

Because I'd hate to lose so many of the really funny bits, this fic is now officially set in an Alternate Universe. It's pretty similar to the one Takahashi wrote about, except… In _this_ universe, Nodoka's got such loopy ideas about her son's manliness, she wants him to take all the other fiancées as mistresses after he marries Akane, in order to satisfy their overlapping claims on him. Hey, it makes perfect sense to _her…_

When I originally wrote these first few chapters, I wanted the story to make sense to all potential readers — i.e., all those who know English, and not just the small subset who treat anime fandom as a kind of secret society, with an understanding of a few key Japanese words standing in for the initiates' special handshake. Accordingly, I dealt with untranslatable elements such as honorifics largely by ignoring them, or by use of awkward substitute phrases if I absolutely had to convey them. The latter approach worked so poorly that I have been forced to give it up. While I still omit — or, in the few cases where it is possible, translate — most uses of honorifics, I have had to retain a few in this and subsequent chapters.

For those who do not understand these secret handshakes (the initiated may skip to the disclaimer): an _honorific_ is a feature of many languages that conveys some aspect of the speaker's relationship to the entity being named. "Fred-sama" is like saying "honoured Fred", or perhaps "venerable Fred", or sometimes even "Lord Fred". It can also be used sarcastically. "-Chan" is used when referring affectionately to a child, to a loved one, or (by children) to a fellow child. It can also be used derisively. "-San" translates directly as "mister," "miss," or "missus," so I don't need to use it very often. "-Kun" is intermediate between "-chan" and "-san" in familiarity, such as might be used by adult good friends, or a teenager to their peers. I seldom need to use this one either. The occupation and/or social status of the person being addressed can also be applied as an honorific, such as "-sensei" for a teacher or a doctor, or "-hime" for a princess — but those generally translate better, so again, I rarely need to use them.

Honorifics in Japanese also differ from those in English by being almost universally gender-neutral. Despite what many people seem to think, "-chan" and "-kun" have no particular relationship to the gender of the people in question, except insofar as people tend to be rather more familiar when addressing young girls than when addressing anyone else.

Not my characters — even my version of Nodoka is based on an embarrassingly large number of other fanfics. The original version of Ranma ½ belongs to Takahashi Rumiko and Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon belongs to Takeuchi Naoko.

* * *

.

* * *

Tendo Nabiki was in a foul mood. She had met a rather dull-witted classmate named Kuno Tatewaki at a restaurant, and sold him some overpriced risqué snapshots of Ranma's girl form and Akane while eating costly pastries at his expense. That had gone as it usually did, save that the pompous samurai-in-his-own-mind had been much more unthinkingly insulting than usual — and had also, quite obviously without even realizing, persisted in ordering her least favourite treats as bribes. Then, to top it off, neither one of her two favourite unsuspecting models was to be found when she came home! She'd tried asking Kasumi, but that had been distressingly like trying to discuss philosophy with a sheep. (Nabiki sometimes worried about her elder sibling's apparent vapidity… but not very hard.) The middle Tendo daughter ended up in her room, phoning around to see if anyone had seen her two missing subjects.

Meanwhile, Kasumi managed to get her secret fit of giggles under control and resumed taking the washing off the clothesline. She was just finishing when Akane unexpectedly hurried into the yard, looking distraught.

"Oh, big sis, it's awful! When I got there, the zookeepers had just recaptured some loose tigers and I saw Ranma in the Cat-Fist, chasing after some Sailor Soldiers!"

Kasumi looked astounded. "Really? Sailor Soldiers? I thought they were an urban legend. Do you suppose he'll bring back some autographs for us?"

"KASUMI! Be serious! He thought he was a cat and he was chasing them like they were mice! It was just like he had a tail to twitch! What if they thought he was a demon? He could be a pile of smoking ashes somewhere by now!" Akane looked ready to burst into tears at any moment.

Footsteps sounded in the doorway of the house. "It's more likely they're trying to seduce him by now," Nabiki said, with a sardonic smile at Akane. "After all, they are said to be fighters for love, and anyone who dresses like that in public has a very definite goal in mind." Nabiki watched eagerly to see how Akane would defend against this sally.

Akane gave Nabiki a stricken look and fled, crying, to her room. She still, in face of all the evidence, thought Ranma was a womanizer who would let himself be seduced in a heartbeat, and she didn't know which set of fears was worse.

"That wasn't very nice, little sister," said Kasumi reprovingly.

"Oh, come on, I was just teasing her," replied Nabiki. "She's going to have to learn how to deal with that sooner or later, especially with the way Ranma talks to her."

Kasumi made a noncommittal sound.

"Well, anyway, the important thing here is the Sailor Soldiers. If Akane saw them outrunning Ranma in Cat-Fist mode, I'm willing to bet they're the real thing, and _that_ means there's a lot of money to be made if I can just get in touch with them. Do you know how many million yen changes hands every month for Sailor Soldier merchandise, merchandise that the Sailors have almost certainly not approved? If I could become their agent, my cut alone would be enough to send us all to Tokyo University!" cackled Nabiki, her grin threatening to overflow her face.

Kasumi blinked and opened her mouth to answer, but Nabiki was already jogging back inside to start digging up what she could on the Pretty Soldiers.

* * *

Meanwhile, back in Minato, the Sailor Soldiers (in civilian guise) were gathered in the Outers' kitchen, discussing Ranma while he showered.

"Well, I agree that we need to help him, and I agree that we can achieve almost anything if all of us pull together, but does anyone have any more _specific_ ideas about what we can actually do?" said Michiru. "This problem does not involve the demons we usually deal with. There isn't anything we can just blast with magic."

"Believe me, when you find out what his father is like, you'll be tempted," said Setsuna with feeling. "And the grandmaster of his martial arts school is even worse."

"WORSE?" chorused most of the others.

"You haven't even mentioned him up until now! How is he worse? And who else will we have to worry about?" asked Haruka.

"Answering that will take a while, and I think we should wait until Ranma comes back… here, these homemade magazines describe most of the people involved. I took all the duplicate ones from the confiscated property box at Usagi's school." Setsuna pushed a stack of garish, cheaply printed leaflets out onto the table. The top one showed a blurry midair photo of a boy Ranma's age, wearing a yellow and black bandanna and with a suggestion of fangs. Surmounting the picture, in eye-watering red and white, was the title: NERIMA MARTIAL ARTS REVIEW.

Haruka picked it up and idly flipped through it, noting that it appeared to be a rather inept compilation of trick photography. Strangely, not all the purported combatants were human. At least one photo showed a ridiculous image of a small white duck with glasses, launching dozens of times' its own weight of chains at some target which was supposedly outside the frame of the picture. As she set the silly pamphlet back down, she saw a note on the inside cover indicating the publishers were some outfit calling themselves the Furinkan High School Photography Club. Haruka gave a small snort of disbelief — really, a _duck⁈_ Even among other schoolchildren, who'd be gullible enough to fall for that?

* * *

As they went about their after-school routines at opposite ends of the family mansion, the two Kuno teenagers suddenly sneezed violently, in unwitting stereo. "Foul sorcerer… can't get a moment's peace…" Tatewaki muttered irritably.

* * *

In the shower, Ranma was deep in thought. Before Sailors Moon and Saturn had healed him of the Cat-Fist, this was something he had always tended to avoid. The thing was, whenever he'd sat down to think in Nerima, he ended up either getting attacked while his guard was down, or chasing his thoughts in circles because of the insoluble fiancée problem. Genma had always been careful never to let him be exposed to the principles of logic, on the grounds that such knowledge might make him "get silly ideas and stop being a dutiful son," as Genma had thought of it.

No, despite appearances, the man was not actually malicious… just incredibly foolish and incompetent.

In any case, as a result of this gap in his training, Ranma had never realized that the problem as posed had no solution — he'd always just thought himself not scholastically inclined enough to figure it out. For much the same reason, it had honestly never occurred to him that being more academically inclined might help him in situations like this. Such had always been portrayed to him as taking valuable time and effort that could be better put towards pursuit of the Art.

Again, the contradictions inherent in this approach to Ranma's education had simply never occurred to Saotome senior.

Now, of course, Ranma wasn't thinking about any of that. After all, he didn't remember any of it. What was weighing on his mind was his inconstant gender.

_How can I be both a guy and a girl? If I started off as a guy, then shouldn't I prefer that?_ he puzzled. _Does this make me weird? I mean weirder than I already am for changing in the first place?_ He turned the water colder and went female. _Oooo, tingly,_ she thought absently, as the tepid water trickled across her more sensitive female skin.

Ranma didn't realize it, but the magical healing the currently-a-girl had undergone had cured her of _everything_ that was ailing her mentally. She'd been resigned to being only half a man after Jusendo, when Jusenkyo was temporarily flooded and the last hope for several months of finding the Spring of Drowned Man had gone, but she hadn't LIKED being female. It was, after all, a curse. However, the Silver Crystal had altered the weaves of the magic Jusenkyo had laced throughout Ranma's very soul, such that it was no longer inherently maleficent. There was more to the healing, as well, but it would be some time before anyone noticed the _other_ results.

Here and now, Ranma was remembering how frightening the change had been when she didn't know about it. _And then, just when I thought nothing would ever go right again, Hotaru-chan came in and was nice to me and wanted to be my friend. She said she thought it makes me special! And her friends all want to be friends with me, too!_ Ranma couldn't believe her good fortune.

"But it's not random, is it?" she mused out loud. _I was_ brought _here. I wonder who those Sailor Soldiers they mentioned were? They must be really smart if they knew I'd be accepted here._ Ranma absently turned the heat back up a bit, reverting to male. _Wait a minute, sure, they didn't know who I was at first… but why did they leave me here instead of taking me home, once they found out? Do I have a home? They must know, they knew what was up when I changed the first time and I panicked. If I have a home, is it an unhappy one? I really hope not…_

"Still," he said decisively to the wall of the shower, "If it is a bad place, maybe the nice people here can help me fix it!"

* * *

Elsewhere, there was a small Chinese restaurant with unusual staffing. In the kitchen, a wizened old woman was discussing recent goings-on with her great-granddaughter. "So Son-in-Law went straight home after school, but he wasn't there when you came back with the food? How strange." Cologne knew that Ranma wouldn't have been able to hide from Shampoo, as the girl had triggered her Jusenkyo curse and investigated in cat form as soon as she'd been balked at the door.

"That right, Great-Grandmother," Shampoo said. "He was there, and Kitchen Destroyer, but they both gone in only five minutes while Shampoo back turned. And now special soup get cold and the Suggestion Herb stop working, start taste funny instead!"

"Wait, Shampoo, what have I told you about using drugs on him? Even if he did have magical help with it, remember that he defeated Saffron the Phœnix King, who in his overpowered state at the time could have destroyed half the village without much effort!" Her brow furrowed briefly, and she absently muttered, "I suspect he's still got both of the dratted staves, too…" before wrenching herself back on topic and finishing her lecture. "Now, what do we do so Son-in-Law never makes it necessary for us to kill him for the safety of the tribe?"

"Always be careful he not find out about drugs! Shampoo sorry."

"That's my girl."

* * *

Ranma, still male, finished dressing in the clothes Haruka had lent him. Even without the amnesia he wouldn't have batted an eye at her cross-dressing, not after dealing with Ukyo and her numerous transvestite suitors; _with_ the amnesia, which had not so much erased his memories as severely Swiss-cheesed them, he didn't even realize there was anything unusual about a pretty girl who dressed as a pretty boy most of the time. He had to admit that Michiru had been right — he did feel better showered and in clean clothes. With a smile that approached his normal cocky grin, he pushed open the door of the changing room and headed bravely downstairs.

Unfortunately, he was promptly besieged by an eager and affectionate Minako and Makoto. They weren't about to let a little thing like a gender-swapping curse keep them away from such a good-looking guy, even if nothing could ultimately come of it because he was engaged.

Besides, Setsuna had kept talking about what she'd glimpsed of Ranma's past in the devious and difficult-to-direct depths of the Time Gates. It had sounded like Ranma never had any good experiences with girls unless someone hit him right afterwards, and the two Sailors were determined to give him some nicer memories than that — chiefly by giving him lots of smiles and unconditional affection, and not being violent about it. The fact that he was starting to look baffled and distressed at their attention just showed how important it was to do so as soon as possible.

Luckily for Ranma, the next person to come across the three was Ami. So, when Ranma shied away from her — there were GIRLS near him being FRIENDLY and Ami was a girl too, therefore she must be about to hit him — she immediately figured out what was going on, and gave Minako and Makoto a very uncharacteristic tongue-lashing. "You heard what Pluto told us about girls chasing him all the time! You heard about the fiancées who hit him whenever he even gets looked at suggestively! Of course he's going to get stressed out if you start coming on to him! What were you thinking⁈"

The two girls, red-faced at the unsuspected gigantic flaw in their plan, immediately apologized to Ranma. They looked so distraught with chagrin that Ranma was taken aback, though he wasn't sure why. He had the oddest feeling that it was his fault they were upset, which seemed both blindingly obvious and incredibly _wrong._

"Um. No problem…?" he said tentatively, drawing a complete blank on how to proceed.

Just then, the conversation was interrupted by Michiru announcing dinner, accompanied by some mouth-watering smells from the kitchen behind her. The three girls and Ranma all eagerly headed to the dining room, grateful for the distraction from the uncomfortable conversation, as Michiru continued on to tell the others it was time to eat.

* * *

Back in Nerima, Ukyo was a bit concerned. Ranma had promised to come by and taste-test a new version of her special okonomiyaki sauce before going home to dinner, but he hadn't shown up. _Easily resolved,_ she thought to herself, _I just need to phone the Tendos and ask. I bet Akane went and cooked something… eurgh…_ experimental _again._ She winced, then brightened. "Ha! They'll be begging to buy dinner off me!" Grinning, she picked up the phone and dialled.

The phone was answered, politely, on the third ring.

"Oh, hi Kasumi, it's Ukyo. Is Ranchan there? He was supposed to come try my new okonomiyaki sauce today."

The answer to this did not seem to match Ukyo's expectations.

"You're kidding. Akane lost him at a zoo? How'd she manage that?"

The ensuing explanation was fairly long, and ended on a _very_ unexpected note.

"WHAT!"

The distant speaker repeated herself.

"All right, but, c'm'on, Sailor Soldiers? Someone's playing a joke on you. There's no such thing."

There followed more explanation, this time rather disjointed, to judge by Ukyo's frown of concentration as she listened to it.

"…They outran him when he was in the Cat-Fist. Nabiki thinks they're real. She _does?_ Well, okay, I'll take your word for it. I'll be right over with Konatsu."

There was an expression of polite surprise from the other end of the line.

"Well, we're going to need to sort out search parties, aren't we? Right. See you in a few." Ukyo hung up and stared blankly at the wall for a few moments. _Sailor Soldiers?_ This was a new depth of weirdness even for Ranma.

"Excuse me, Ukyo-sama, but did I hear correctly? Ranma-sama got lost while chasing Sailor Soldiers?" asked Konatsu respectfully.

"Apparently, sugar. Pretty crazy, huh?"

"EEEEE! I hope we can get autographs! They are so cool! I've got a little picture of them in the cupboard where I sleep."

"Wha…?"

"Oh, to be a pretty sailor-suited defender of love and justice! It's every girl's dream!" Konatsu's eyes had little hearts in them.

"Okaaaaay. You do remember that you're really a guy?"

"I've lived my whole life as a girl. Please, Ukyo-sama, don't confuse me with technicalities."

* * *

Dinner at the Outers' house was a cheerful and somewhat boisterous affair, what with the Inners, Ranma, and Usagi's husband Chiba Mamoru all visiting, and the oldest person present (Setsuna) being only 20. Mamoru had come straight over after work, arriving just in time to sit down with the others, and Setsuna and Usagi were taking it in turns to tell him all about the day's strange events — suitably edited for Ranma's ears, of course.

"And then they healed her head, but she went unconscious instead of getting up human. They didn't know who she was or where she came from yet, so they brought her here where we could look after her," Usagi was saying.

Setsuna continued, "A little while later, Sailor Pluto came back and told us what she'd learned about Ranma, like that she was really a boy with a transformative curse, and asked us to look after him until they could find a way to make his life less horrible."

"Why, what's wrong?" asked Mamoru.

_So that's why they didn't take me home,_ Ranma thought glumly to himself. _Looks like I was right about it being a bad place._ Out loud, he said, "Yeah, what's so awful they couldn't take me home?"

Setsuna looked at Mamoru, then at Ranma. "I wasn't going to get into that until after dinner. Basically, almost everyone who had a big part in your life before you were brought to us wants to either kill you, own you or use you, and in a few cases all three. Can we please leave the details for later? I don't want to ruin anyone's appetite when they've made us such a wonderful meal." _Good one, Setsuna, that was really reassuring,_ she thought to herself with an inward wince. She felt rather foolish; she hadn't blurted out something so ill-considered in years, not since well before having had her Sailor Pluto memories reawakened. Something about Ranma just seemed to encourage an unfortunate degree of honesty.

Getting rather reluctant nods from both males, Setsuna changed the subject and began swapping tales with Mamoru of humorous events at their respective schools. As both of them knew very well, the old joke about universities being the home of "academentia" was almost too accurate to be funny.

The other girls noticed Ranma's mood and, with some effort, managed to get him thinking of cheerier things. No longer distracted by trying to learn about himself, Ranma was soon eating with his usual gusto, to general astonishment. "By all the gods," said Rei in awed tones, "There are TWO of them!" Everyone except Ranma immediately swivelled to look at Usagi.

Usagi looked up in mid-gulp, her chopsticks stopped halfway out of her mouth. "Whaff?" she asked indistinctly, and swallowed the mouthful she was chewing. "Have I got something on my face?"

Everyone else broke up laughing. "No, but I think you've got some competition for the leftovers," said Haruka with a grin. Ranma blushed.

"Hey, if anyone else wanted it they'd have eaten it already," said Usagi cheerfully, to a chorus of tolerant groans.

The rest of the meal passed in a happy, chaotic whirl of eating and conversation. Before too long, everyone was coöperating to clear away the dishes.

"Now," said Setsuna when they'd all sat back down at the freshly cleaned table, "we need to discuss Ranma's screwed-up life and what we can do to help." She brought the stack of cheap magazines out again, and handed them out to people at random. "We'll be getting a visit from Sailor Mercury and her computer soon so she can scan Ranma, and I'd like to have some ideas by then."

Ami didn't so much as bat an eyelid at this, but she did nod at Setsuna in acknowledgement as soon as Ranma's attention was elsewhere. Before that, she spoke: "I think we should start by telling Ranma all the stuff you told us while he was in the shower."

"I got some of it from what you said before dinner," put in Ranma, a bit warily.

Setsuna gave a nonchalant half-shrug and said, "And hearing a summary twice would get boring for most of you. I'll just tell the story of Ranma's life, as we got it from Sailor Pluto.

"Your name, as we told you earlier, is Saotome Ranma. Your father is Genma and your mother is Nodoka, and I hate to say this about anyone, but many of the things they have done to you ought to have landed them both in jail, your mother for child abandonment and your father for child abuse. You went on a ten-year martial arts training trip with Genma when you were six years old, and your mother's idea of making sure you came out of it all right was to accept an honour pledge that you would both commit honourable suicide if she did not judge you a 'Man among Men,' whatever that's supposed to mean, on your return. Your 'signature' consisted of playful finger painting, and you had no idea of the contract until Nodoka caught up with the both of you a few months ago. I'll say more about that in a minute.

"Your training trip took you to dojos and monasteries all over East Asia, and while you travelled Genma taught you what he could as well. Unfortunately, he is almost without scruples, and a large part of your early training was in committing petty thefts of food and other supplies. You eventually refused to commit any more crimes when you realized it was wrong, but by that time the other problem with Genma's training methods had already surfaced: the man is incredibly hasty and shortsighted, and frequently trained you in things before he understood them completely himself.

"The worst of these incompletely understood techniques was the Cat-Fist. The training method is to take a young child — six years old, in your case — wrap them in fish products, and keep throwing them into a pit of starving cats until they go insane from the fear and trauma. The subject's mind defends itself from the cats by becoming one itself, and the result is a human who thinks they are a cat, to the extent of manifesting invisible 'claws' of chi that can cut through anything, and developing the ability to purr. The original idea was to create a berserk, like the Vikings a thousand years ago, who drew on the mental states of bears or wolves — but with domesticated elements to make it easier to control, hence the housecat part.

"You went from being fond of cats to being absolutely terrified of them, and if you couldn't get away from one that was scaring you, the fear overwhelmed your mind just like it did in the pit, and you would 'go cat.' You were apparently in such a state when you were found by the Sailor Soldiers, which is how you ended up here with us, but that's getting ahead of myself." Setsuna paused to sip some tea.

"Luna and Artemis aren't here, are they?" queried Rei, with some alarm.

"No, they stayed home when we went out earlier," lied Usagi. The Moon Cats had really gone to kill time in the Sailors' hidden control room under the Crown Amusement Centre.

Minako nodded in agreement. "The Sailor Soldiers cured it anyway, so I doubt it matters."

"I still don't like cats. I don't remember the pit itself, but I remember remembering it. Cats are not good news." Ranma spoke with an apologetic but final air.

"Oh, is your memory coming back?" asked Ami with interest.

"Not really, but hearing about my life is dredging up a few scraps of feelings and half-memories that make a bit more sense now."

Setsuna picked up the thread again. "Anyway… Er. Drat. I accidentally left out an episode that would later come back to haunt you. Never mind, I'll back up a bit. A couple of months before the Cat-Fist incident, Genma took you through Kansai, where you met a wandering okonomiyaki chef and his child Ukyo…"

* * *

While the Sailors, Mamoru and Ranma listened enthralled to Setsuna's tale of Ranma's past, the various martial artists of Nerima and their hangers-on were gathering at the Tendo Dojo to talk about ways of finding Ranma. So far they'd figured out that he was probably still somewhere in the Azabu-Jūban district of the neighbouring Minato ward, as all available evidence pointed to the Sailors living there. No one knew where, exactly, but there were enough people present to search it thoroughly if nothing better came up.

They'd managed to avoid involving the Kunos so far, but unfortunately for all concerned, the gathering did include Happosai, who was even more enthusiastic than usual because Nabiki had sold him a few blurry magazine pictures of the Sailor Soldiers. He was now expounding at length on the sort of places you might look for girls who wore their skirts that short: "— and then there's this massage parlour right in the middle of Azabu-Jūban where they really know how to make an old man happy —"

"Grandfather Happosai, please!" Kasumi broke in, blushing furiously. "You know Ranma would never willingly enter a place like that, and I really doubt they keep any superheroines in there either."

Happosai was so taken aback at this conjunction of ideas — how could anyone not want to enter a massage parlour⁈ — that he fell silent for long enough to lose the floor. A babble of conversation sprang up as everyone began talking at once. It was cut short as Nodoka suddenly realized what Kasumi had just said about her son. "Kasumi, dear, what did you mean by that? A manly man seeks out female company at every opportunity. How else is he supposed to get the experience he'll need to keep all his mistresses happy after he marries Akane?"

This pronouncement was greeted with dead silence. Genma looked like he'd swallowed his tongue and began sweating nervously, eyeing his wife's sword. Soun wanted to be outraged at this affront to his youngest daughter's ability to satisfy her future husband's male urges, but the sword and its frighteningly unskilled wielder were uppermost in his mind as well, so he uneasily held his peace. Akane, Ukyo and Shampoo didn't know whether to be revolted or infuriated, and Kasumi had blanched like a bedsheet at being put on the spot in such a way. Cologne and Happosai were impassive but each raised an eyebrow, while Mousse was so indignant on behalf of Shampoo that his powers of speech had temporarily flown the coop — though, of course, no one paid any heed to _his_ ruffled feathers. Nabiki and Konatsu were so busy thrashing out every detail they'd gleaned about Sailor Soldiers that they hadn't really been paying attention to Nodoka's words, but they fell silent in surprise when everyone else suddenly stopped talking.

"Um, I, I —" Kasumi gibbered. Fortunately for her, Nodoka's attention was diverted as all three fiancées decided on "infuriated" and blew their stacks simultaneously.

"**MISTRESSES⁈**"

Nodoka looked astonished. "Of course! What's wrong with that? My son is far too manly for any one of you girls alone. In fact, I've been giving serious consideration to finding him some non-martial-artist mistresses as well, to make him a more well-rounded person." In Minato, the Sailors all suddenly felt a chill, and wondered why. "How about you, Kasumi? And perhaps Nabiki as well?" suggested Nodoka brightly.

Kasumi froze again, a panicked expression on her face. Nabiki somehow managed to avoid spraying her mouthful of tea across the room, and in fact betrayed no outward signs of having heard Nodoka at all, apart from a slight greenish tinge to her suddenly immobile features.

"Or, even better, how about you two _and_ miss Konatsu?" continued Nodoka happily, turning to face the gender-confused ninja. "I'm sure a traditional young lady like you would be very good for Ranma…"

* * *

.

* * *

END PART TWO

_Latest revision as of Weds. 2009/04/15_

The bit about Nabiki wanting to be the Sailors' agent waltzed straight into my brain from Burger Becky's excellent _Sailor Ranko_ continuations. It's not totally in character for manga-Nabiki, but it's close enough to "plausible" that I just couldn't resist it. I hope no one minds, especially not Burger Becky.

I also have to say I'm stunned that no one else seems to have ever added Konatsu to the list of fiancées. He's a boy who thinks he's a girl, and when Ranma is in cursed form, she's a girl who thinks she's a boy… they're even both lesbians! It's a perfect match, I tell you!

Uh, yeah… Shutting up now.


	3. Chapter 3

**Permutation**

A Ranma ½ / Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon crossover  
© 2004–2009 by gsteemso

Chapter Three

Author's note:

When fitting a story set in Japan to English prose, some compromises are necessary. As noted in the previous chapter, I've found using the occasional Japanese honorific to be unavoidable without clumsy circumlocutions. I've also found that, given how there is no direct translation, using the Japanese "kunoichi" in place of "female ninja" is desirable for reasons of textual flow. Hope no one minds.

Not my characters — Ranma ½ belongs to Takahashi Rumiko and Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon belongs to Takeuchi Naoko.

* * *

.

* * *

The kunoichi Konatsu was rooted to the floor with shock at Nodoka's offer, but because he was a very _good_ ninja, this state of affairs was short-lived. He opened his mouth and, after a few false starts, managed to squeak out, "Um, thank you for thinking of me, Saotome-sama, but I — I really couldn't — I — Ukyo-sama — I mean, I already have plans — I mean —"

Nodoka fixed the kunoichi with an incredulous stare. "Do you mean to tell me you like _other girls⁈"_

Konatsu's feminine appearance was enhanced as he blushed a fetching shade of brilliant red and, struck all but dumb with embarrassment, nodded. "S-sorry," he whispered.

"Excellent!" beamed Nodoka. "I've been so worried that no one will be up to the task of satisfying my son's manly needs when he is a girl."

Everyone else, who had as one person taken a deep pull on their tea rather than get involved with the current conversation, erupted in a cacophony of coughing and spit-takes.

Nodoka looked puzzled. "I'm sorry, did I say something wrong? You must realize, since Ukyo-chan is promised to Ranma, this is the only way she and Konatsu-chan could honourably be with one another. Oh, it's so easy to solve problems when everyone works together!"

Ukyo and Konatsu had by this point both locked up in shocked disbelief, advanced ninja skills or not. Finally they gave in and fainted, each with a great sense of relief.

* * *

"…So, since the wedding was destroyed, everything stayed pretty much the way it had been before — except that your mother had already declared you to be 'manly,' so you no longer needed to worry about having to commit seppuku. Well, not because of your father's stupid pledge, at least — it may still be the only way to resolve the fiancée mess.

"In any case, the Amazon and the chef expected you to be grateful that they had prevented your marriage to the angry girl Akane, in spite of the fact that you loved her and not them. You're such a softie when it comes to girls that the closest you've come to telling them off for it is to give them the cold shoulder and avoid them, which neither of them has really noticed. Not surprising, as it's been more of a 'lukewarm shoulder' coming from you.

"Then there's the samurai-wannabe, Kuno Tatewaki. He's now decided that attacking you with a real sword must be socially acceptable, since — at least in his warped mind — no one stopped him from doing so at the wedding, and he's been doing it more and more often ever since." Setsuna paused briefly. "That brings us up to date, I think. Do you have any questions?"

Ranma looked haggard. "I've got _how_ many fiancées?" he asked plaintively.

Setsuna replied, "We're not sure how many there are in total, but for the ones currently active in your life, you have two violent fiancées; a sexually predatory self-proclaimed wife; and two crazy people who are not technically engaged to you, but both of whom want to kill one of your forms and marry, or at least seduce, the other."

"And nearly all my friends, relatives and fiancées have at one time or another tried to kill me."

"Some were less serious about it than others, but that's essentially correct."

"Gaahh." Ranma had to wonder how he'd ever stood such a life at all, much less for the years he'd apparently tolerated it. Just for a moment, he was uncharacteristically struck by a fervent wish that he could become someone else, so he wouldn't have to go back.

"Yeah, that was pretty much what we said when we found out," said Usagi, managing with an effort to sound light-hearted and cheerful, rather than like her actual state of nigh-incandescent outrage.

"Actually, if none of you knew me until those Sailor Soldier people handed me over to you, how DID you find out about all that? Nobody's got a good enough memory to remember being told all that."

Various girls held _Nerima Martial Arts Review_ leaflets where Ranma could see them. They all had blurry pictures of martial artists on the cover. Michiru explained, "Sailor Pluto gave us a bunch of issues of this homemade magazine, which told us a lot, then she filled in the rest. She also warned us that going to Furinkan district to find out more in person would be really dangerous because of all the crazies. The fiancées, in particular, would be very hostile because we are mostly girls and they would assume we wanted to steal you. They're apparently pretty paranoid about more competition showing up."

"Gaahh." Ranma was beginning to feel about going back to the Tendos the way a soldier feels about being sent behind enemy lines, only without the underlying assumption that it might achieve something.

"It could be worse. From the pictures, your fiancées are all very pretty," said Usagi, trying to lighten the mood.

Ranma twitched, and reached for his tea.

"And it's so romantic that they're all willing to fight for you!" gushed Minako.

Ranma choked in mid-sip.

"Um, I think you guys should quit while you're behind," suggested Haruka absently. She was still rather taken aback at the idea that the phoney-looking pictures in the _Nerima Martial Arts Review_ were apparently genuine. Even knowing Setsuna as well as she did, it was a difficult idea to swallow in one go.

* * *

The Murphy's Law Gremlin tried again to penetrate the aura of orderly goodness that was keeping it out of the Outers' house. Finally it remembered where it had seen this before, and gave up. It knew it had no hope of getting past the Silver and Golden Crystals unless the Crystals were focused on something else.

It gave a very human shrug and turned back towards Nerima. It had its hands full keeping the Nerima Wrecking Crew off balance anyway. Still, things could have been a lot worse for it — people like Nodoka and Happosai just made its job so _easy_ in some ways.

* * *

"We still need to think of ways we can help Ranma," Ami reminded the others. "Or at least ways the Sailors can help him."

"Panda flambé sounds good," said Rei menacingly. "I'm sure Sailor Mars would agree."

"_Pervert_ flambé first, I think," said Minako with a shudder.

"Which pervert?" smirked Haruka, her attention once more fully on the conversation. "They'll be kind of spoilt for choice there."

"_I_ think Sailor Moon should purify them all with the Silver Crystal," said Usagi firmly.

"Why does Ranma have to go back at all?" asked Hotaru timidly, tugging at Michiru's sleeve.

"Well, he's got a life to go back and continue, but actually, that's a good point," said Michiru. "Ranma could probably finish school here with fewer problems than if he went back, and it's not like there's any kind of time limit on all those entanglements of honour. Some breathing space might help him sort them out."

"Okay, I guess, but what about the Amazons? And it sounds kinda like running away from my problems. That's something the panda would do. I don't want to be like that," said Ranma.

"We know you have to go back, but you could always do it later, like after you finish school or something. Maybe by then some of them would have given up on you," suggested Mamoru.

Thoughtfully, Setsuna answered, "The problem with that idea is that we have no way to hide Ranma for very long. All the loonies are only one ward away, and they probably know where to start looking for him — everyone knows where the Sailor Soldiers spend most of their time, after all. Sailor Pluto warned us that many of the people over there we've been talking about seemed quite resourceful, and I wouldn't be surprised if some busybody shows up in this neighbourhood within the week. We might be able to do something about that with the Sailors' help, though… What do you think, Ranma? Do you want to try to get some breathing space in your life?"

"Ummm… let me think about it. I'm not sure. Actually, I'll be right back." Ranma got up from the table and scurried upstairs towards the bathroom. Answering the call of nature provides a perfect time for introspection, after all.

Ami watched him go. "Now's probably a good time for Sailor Mercury to show up," she said quietly to the others. "If he asks where I've gone, just tell him I had to go home." She got up too, and headed for the kitchen closet to transform.

Just as she came back out as Sailor Mercury, Ranma came hurtling down the stairs again, looking distraught. "What happened⁈" he cried out, then suddenly came to a screeching halt in front of Mercury. He looked at her with a comically bewildered expression on his face, tilting his head to one side and then the other. He looked around at everyone else as though he were counting them, then turned back to her and asked incredulously, "Ami? Is that really you?"

* * *

Back in Nerima, the discussion had finally gotten back on track. Cologne was suggesting that Shampoo, as a skilled tracker, ought to go to the zoo where Ranma had gone missing, to see if she could pick up the Sailors' trail. "And if Happi and I go with her, we might be able to sense their magic," she added.

"Hotcha! Sweet li'l Shampoo, all to myself!" cried Happosai joyously. "Let me give you a big hug to celebrate!" He launched himself at Shampoo's bosom, only to be pulled up short by Cologne's staff, which was suddenly inserted through the back of his gi.

"Can't you control yourself even for five minutes?" she asked him irritably.

The shrivelled old pervert put one hand to his chin, his eyes rolling back in deep thought as he considered the question from all angles. "Nope!" he said at last, cheerfully.

"Yeurgh," shuddered all the girls present, including Konatsu.

"Anyway, I suppose that's a good idea, but you should take Konatsu with you," said Ukyo. "Better yet, we'll all go. That way if we find them, we can all see first hand what's going on."

"And maybe get some autographs?" suggested Kasumi with a hopeful look. Akane rolled her eyes in exasperation.

"Yeah!" agreed Konatsu eagerly, flushing pinkly at being so forward, but far too excited to sit any more quietly.

_Yeah, like on this contract I drew up…_ thought Nabiki to herself, grinning, eyes a-sparkle with barely contained avarice. _I still can't believe I got Daddy to sign it for me without even reading it. I'm going to be_ **so** _rich!_ It honestly never occurred to her that the Sailors might not be old enough to sign a binding contract either, though all of them save Pluto were in that very situation.

"Well, what are we waiting for? Let's go find the boy and make him do his duty!" Genma blustered self-importantly.

"Quite so, Saotome!" agreed Soun. "We'll make him sort out his fiancée situation tomorrow, and we'll see the schools united by Tuesday afternoon!"

"And then he can take his wife and all his mistresses on a honeymoon, and see about making me some grandchildren!" agreed Nodoka, with little stars in her eyes. The girls and Konatsu all twitched and/or flinched, but didn't dare say anything for fear of setting her off again. "There's just one thing I don't understand…"

"Yes, dear? What's that?" asked Genma. It seemed a harmless enough question. She was, after all, going on about grandchildren again.

"What was all that about… _cats?"_ she asked, her forehead creasing in puzzlement.

"Yes, do tell, Uncle!" chirped Nabiki, with a malicious smirk.

_Splash!_

"Cute li'l pandas don't keep cats!" read Genma's sign, as he played with a red and yellow beach ball.

"I suppose I should have expected that," Nodoka reflected philosophically. Everyone else, including Genma, nodded in agreement.

* * *

The Sailors and Mamoru were all staring at Ranma, aghast. How had he seen through the disguise field? If anyone else learned how to do that, their families could be in danger!

He spoke up again, still addressing the dumbstruck Sailor Mercury. "You have to be Ami. I didn't feel anyone's aura come in or out of the house, and you're the only one missing," he said suspiciously. "I know it has to be you, so why can't I bring your face to mind?"

The others just stared, completely lost at this revelation. He couldn't penetrate the disguise field, but he still knew who she was?

"How did you know?" asked Mercury, finally finding her voice. There didn't seem to be much point in staying in uniform, so with a flicker of blue lights, she changed back to her civilian guise.

"Well, I was just upstairs, which is still close enough to feel everyone's aura. Yours went apart from the others, then suddenly got a lot bigger and _changed_ somehow. I couldn't seem to focus on it enough to tell why, just like I couldn't seem to remember your face just now, but I knew something big was going on. So, what was all that about? Why were you dressed in that weird cheerleader's outfit?"

_"Cheerleader⁈"_ exclaimed most of the girls, affronted.

"Never mind about that, this is important," said Setsuna. "Ranma, if anyone finds out that Ami is Sailor Mercury, her friends and family could be endangered by her enemies. Will you swear on your honour to never reveal her identity to anyone?"

"Huh? Well, yeah, of course, I'm not going to put anyone in danger," he said. "So that was a Sailor Soldier uniform, was it? And you all knew who she was. Are you all Sailors too?"

The tension in the room could have been cut with a knife.

Finally, Usagi broke it. "I say we trust him," she said. "Yes, Ranma, we are the beautiful sailor-suited defenders of love and justice, the Sailor Soldiers. Now that you know —"

"Wait, wait," said Ranma, "Are you telling me _he_ wears a Sailor suit too⁈" He was pointing at Mamoru.

"Certainly not!" snapped the reborn Prince of Earth.

"He wears a tuxedo, Ranma," said Ami patiently. "Usagi was trying to say something important. If anyone else learns our identities, it could potentially doom the whole world. We've stopped invasions from other worlds and other dimensions on several occasions, and _**no one else could have done it**._ We must remain hidden from view when we are not actively fighting evil, or anything could happen."

"I understand. I'll keep your secrets," said Ranma solemnly. He smirked. "From what Setsuna told us about that guy who turns into a pig, it'll be a nice change to keep a secret that won't be used against me."

Everyone else smiled back, as the tension eased away. "That it will, oh yes," said Setsuna. "Now, Ami was going to scan you…"

"Already started," put in Ami "and… hmm, interesting. Could you change forms a few times please, Ranma?" She had pulled the Mercury Computer out of hyperspace and was studying the display intently.

"Um, okay," said Ranma. "I'll need water…"

"Here you go," said Hotaru bashfully, handing him a couple of thermos flasks. "The purple one is the hot water."

"Thanks, Hotaru-chan."

_Splash!_ Ranma went female.

"Huh. Wasn't expecting that. Again please?" asked Ami.

_Splash!_ Back to male.

_Splash!_ Female again. "Like that?" Ranma asked.

"Yes, I think that should do it. Did anyone remember to bring Ranma a towel?"

"Here's the one out of the kitchen," said Michiru as she handed it over. "So what did you find out?"

"Yeah, what weren't you expecting? That wasn't exactly reassuring, you know," said Ranma as she blotted herself dry. Just as she finished, she realized that she'd forgotten to turn male first. After a moment, she decided it didn't matter. _After all, "I've grown since then. Now I'm both," aren't I… and why not?_

Though no one was in any position to notice just yet, the reëmergence of her enormous self-confidence after her mental healing was plainly having effects on Ranma that not even Usagi would ever have expected.

"Well, I set the computer to see what it could find out about the magic that's been used on you, and also to scan your brain to see what exactly happened when they healed you," Ami began.

"So what was unexpected?" asked Minako.

"Well, it looks like the magic of the curse was modified by the Silver Crystal, and even before that I think the transformation was more thorough than you would expect," she answered. "Normally a magical transformation leaves traces at some level of the original form, but Ranma's is complete and accurate right down to the DNA."

Setsuna spoke up. "From what I saw of his past, Ranma originally retained a male mind in her female form."

"Ah, that makes sense. That must be what the Silver Crystal changed about it. Usagi, what exactly did you try to do with the Crystal?"

"I tried to focus on prodding her mind back into a healthy human shape instead of a cat shape. I couldn't just tell it to 'make her normal,' or she'd have ended up like some kind of clone of those fashion-obsessed girls at the mall. I could tell from her clothes that that wouldn't have been right for her."

"Gaahh." Ranma was less than pleased to hear how close she'd come to being, as she saw it, a living zombie.

"There you are, then. A gender mismatch between mind and body is unhealthy, so the Crystal fixed it. Ah, that must be what this reading means! I think Ranma was adapting to being female even with a male mind, so the Crystal had a ready template to work from when it made his girl side fully female."

Ranma looked horrified. "Fully fe— I'm not going to start liking GUYS, am I? Ewwwww!"

"From the scan of your mind, I doubt it. It didn't actually make you any different, just more comfortable with yourself, mostly. Your guy side is still 100 percent male. It looks like the Crystal fixed a bunch of other stuff too — Setsuna said you'd had things like 'men don't cry' beaten into you all your life, but you cried freely with us in the bathroom. It looks like the harmful block against expressing emotions was removed."

"Up to a point, I guess," she agreed, "but I still wouldn't cry in company if I was feeling halfway normal. That was kind of an extreme situation."

"Okay, but if he's had all his unhealthy mental blocks removed, why does he still get nervous when girls are nice to him? That's not healthy," put in Makoto.

"Hmm. Good question. Usagi, could you hold out the Silver Crystal? I'd like to see if it kept a record. Yeah, like that. Scanning…" There was a brief pause as the two Silver Millennium artefacts "discussed" matters, for lack of a better phrase. Being almost entirely magical in nature, the communion that was taking place was almost indescribable in most twentieth-century human languages. "Okay, it says here the Crystal cross-checked all his reflexes against his memories to make sure they made sense, and that one was retained because nearly all his memories of girls showed it was a necessary defensive reaction."

"Good grief," said Rei. "What did they DO to him?"

"Basically, one or more of his suitors would latch onto him, and then the others would blame him for being groped instead of the offending party for groping him," said Setsuna. "They were all very violent in expressing their displeasure, too. Either that, or two or three of them would grab him and pull in opposite directions, HARD, trying to take possession… as though he were a highly sought-after piece of merchandise with an about-to-be-cancelled 90 percent markdown, or something."

"Gaahh." Uncharacteristically, Ranma once again found herself wishing that she could become someone else, so she wouldn't have to go back. Her old life sounded like a montage of scenes from a madhouse!

"I couldn't agree more. What a bunch of crazies!" said Haruka sympathetically, inadvertently agreeing with Ranma's thoughts as well as her words.

"Yeah…" Ranma looked distracted. "Um, when you guys were talking about the Sailors using their powers on all the people who treated me badly, you meant yourselves, right?" She rubbed her chin thoughtfully.

"Well, yeah… does it matter?" asked Rei.

"I just had an idea. A really weird idea…"

* * *

Back in the Furinkan district of Nerima, in a large mansion, a dispute was taking place.

"Honestly, brother dearest, I don't understand how even one of your low intellect can be so obsessed with a pair of peasant girls." The speaker was Kuno Kodachi, and she was addressing her brother Tatewaki, whom she had interrupted while he was "viewing" (drooling over) the risqué pictures of Akane and girl-Ranma he had just bought that afternoon from Nabiki.

"It is no stranger, my twisted sibling, than your inexplicable infatuation with that low-born dog Saotome Ranma," he shot back.

"What I do with my darling Ranma-sama is no concern of yours."

"No more is what I do with my two loves any concern of yours!"

"You really ought to just pick one, you know. You can't marry them both."

Tatewaki went cross-eyed as he tried to process that. There was a strong smell of scorched hair. Finally his brain reset itself and he counterattacked: "Was there a point to this conversation, O sister mine?"

"There was, but I couldn't resist the large target you provide people for teasing."

"Well? Pray get on with it!"

"I have hired a private investigator to observe the home where my darling Ranma-sama is held captive by his father's dreadful pact with that Tendo trollop —"

"We might conclude this conversation some time this year if you dispensed with the editorial comments."

"Excuse _me._ The important part is, the investigator just called me. My poor Ranma-sama has disappeared, and so has the red-haired strumpet! She is probably working her wicked ways on him in some seedy back room as we speak!"

"It is more likely that he has forced the poor girl into a love hotel or something equally salacious. We must find them at once!"

"The investigator also said that the other fiancées and their associates have gathered there to plan a search. We must succeed before they do!"

"For once we are in agreement. We must learn what they know. To the Tendo Dojo, and quickly!"

* * *

"Are you sure you want to try that, Ranma? What if it doesn't work?" Minako was torn between conspiratorial glee and honest concern for the Sailors' latest protégée.

"Then… I guess we'll just have to try hiding me here. Setsuna, what ideas did you have for that?"

"In a crisis, you can hide for a day or two at one of our planetary castles, but they haven't been lived in for thousands of years, so I'm not sure how comfortable that would be. For day-to-day living, I think a better approach would be for you to borrow Usagi's disguise pen, and go to school here under an assumed name. Since you used to hate being female but you have no objections to it now, I'd suggest going as a girl to throw them even further off the trail."

"Hmm. That sounds like it would work, though I dunno about going to school as a girl — what would I do about gym class? — but the disguise part sounds good. How about it, Usagi? What do you think?"

"I think your idea is way too funny not to try, and it'll work even better if you use the disguise pen for that too. Sure, you can use it," she said. "Here you go." She handed over a small rod.

"Great!" There was a pause. "Um, how do I use it?"

Usagi smiled. "Just hold it over your head and say, 'MOON POWER! Transform into,' and then whatever you want to disguise yourself as."

"Oh, okay. Ami, what was that one called that we decided on, again?"

Ami spoke a name.

"Right!" Ranma held the pen above herself and said the magic words. The others all grinned approvingly as she took on the guise of…

"Look out, fiancées and fat pandas! I'm Sailor Europa, and in the name of the Moon, I'll punish you!" Everyone else broke up laughing.

* * *

.

* * *

END PART THREE

_Latest revision as of Weds. 2008/04/09_

Why Sailor Europa? Well, it made sense to me that Ranma would have an affinity for water, and Europa (Jupiter's fourth-largest moon) is popularly speculated to have liquid oceans under all the ice. In the _2001_ series of books, Arthur C. Clarke postulates the existence of life around hydrothermal vents on the Europan seabed. If that were true, we'd have both hot and cold water in one place, and it stands to reason that a place with life on it would get a Sailor guardian before one that's dead. Since they've made the whole thing up just to play a joke on the Nerima Wrecking Crew, they were able to pick a very appropriate celestial body.

I should also mention that, yes, I know the whole "disguise field" thing is based in fanon rather than canon. (In the original manga, several people the Sailors know recognize them when they are in uniform, though they apparently all decide to keep it to themselves.) I just thought it would be more fun this way.


	4. Chapter 4

**Permutation**

A Ranma ½ / Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon crossover  
© 2004–2009 by gsteemso

Chapter Four

Not my characters — Ranma ½ belongs to Takahashi Rumiko and Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon belongs to Takeuchi Naoko.

* * *

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* * *

Seven o'clock went past in Minato's warehouse district, in almost complete silence apart from the dull background roar of Tokyo's teeming millions living their lives. At this hour, the rats and the crows had the place more or less to themselves, as afternoon shaded imperceptibly into evening. Behind a high fence on a vacant property, Tuxedo Mask and nine girls in Sailor Soldier uniforms suddenly appeared, standing in a circle with their hands linked.

"So why couldn't Se— I mean, Sailor Pluto come with us?" asked Ranma, still disguised as Sailor Europa.

"She's even more secret than the rest of us," replied Sailor Moon. "She has to be."

"Yeah, up until recently just knowing she existed was punishable by death," agreed Mars. "I know that sounds a bit extreme, but just imagine what people like Pol Pot or Hitler or Stalin might have done with access to the Gates of Time! She can't be too careful about staying out of sight."

"Um, who are they?" asked Ranma, looking bewildered.

The others all stared at her, wondering what kind of a joke she thought that was.

When it became apparent that Ranma hadn't been joking, Mercury sighed, and said, "They were ruthless, mass-murdering dictators at various times earlier in this century, Europa. I can see we'll have to work on your education, too, when we get back."

Ranma winced and hurriedly changed the subject. "So, how are we going to do this? We need to figure out a way for me to imitate having powers like yours…"

"Well, the first thing we need to do is show you some of our attacks and see if anything occurs to you," began Neptune. "Let's take it in planetary order… Mercury?"

"All right, sounds good to me, but we need a target first!" answered Mercury, looking around. The derelict property they were on consisted of a vast — by Tokyo standards — but empty expanse of asphalt, with a decaying but fairly intact warehouse complex in the middle. A second, much smaller expanse of asphalt ran about four metres below the level they were on, with a railway spur and loading dock running along it. A chain link fence, with vertical strips woven through it for screening, ran along the lip of the retaining wall that divided the two areas.

Obviously they couldn't go demolishing someone's building, even if it was currently unused, but there didn't seem to be much else around. After some discussion, everyone fanned out to look for debris, meeting back by the fence ten minutes later with an assortment of head-sized rocks and short scraps of lumber, as well as a couple of old truck tires with gaping holes in them and a two-metre length of narrow but heavy-gauge steel piping. They arranged it all in a big heap with the boards and the pipe sticking up out of the top, and lined up by the fence to take turns throwing magic at it.

As suggested, they went in Solar system order, if only to save the trouble of deciding who would go first otherwise. Mercury debated which one of her four offensive attacks to use, then thought, _Oh, why not?_ and got out the Mercury Aqua Harp. She played a few measures of "Scotland the Brave" on it, crying out "Mercury Aqua Rhapsody!" as she began. (Scottish bagpipe music was often used to play battle marches in times past, which Mercury thought was sort of appropriate for declaring war on a pile of rubble, but "Scotland the Brave" was the only one she could remember well enough to try playing. Bagpipe music was, after all, not a major feature of Japanese schoolgirl life, not even for a somewhat nerdy _magical_ schoolgirl.) Jets of super-cold water shot out with each note, freezing the heap so quickly that it exploded, sending chunks of ice and rubble everywhere. The length of steel pipe acquired a big, off-centre V-bend and went scything away into the middle distance.

Just for an instant, Ranma was reminded of Herb, dragon-descended Prince — well, Princess, at the time — of the Musk, throwing chi-blasts around as though it took no effort at all to project huge amounts of her life force out of her body. Ranma shivered — that wasn't a fun memory. She was almost glad she couldn't remember any more of it.

"Oops. Sorry, I put a bit too much into that one," said Mercury sheepishly. The others helped her rebuild the heap, and then it was Venus' turn.

Venus stepped forward, shouted "Venus Love-Me Chain!" and snagged the protruding pipe with the magical chain of hearts that appeared. Once the chain had a grip on it, she flipped the pipe into the air and cried, "Crescent Beam!" A beam of light shot from her hand and cut off the last cubit of metal. The Love-Me Chain vanished as though it had never been, and the two chunks of pipe fell noisily back to Earth. Venus propped the longer piece back up on the heap, and withdrew to leave a clear field of fire for the next person.

Ranma had a momentary flash of someone using his own belt as a sword. _Iron Cloth technique,_ she thought distractedly, and _Why didn't his pants fall down?_ That one didn't seem to help much either.

After a short "No, really, after _you!"_ session between himself and Sailor Moon, Tuxedo Mask stepped forward and called out, "Tuxedo La Smoking Bomber!" A sparkling pattern of energy bolts wreathed in smoke shot forward, shattering many of the boards and cracking some of the rocks in the heap.

Ranma had a brief flash of leaping around on a giant cooking surface while someone hidden in the haze threw some sort of gunpowder-laced food flakes at him, which threatened to blow pieces off of him as they detonated on the hot griddle. _Hmm, maybe that one… no, when am I going to be fighting on a giant griddle again? And it might go off while I'm holding it anyway. They're basically home-made grenades…_ "Not exactly a smart thing to carry around," she muttered aloud. Tuxedo Mask gave her a faintly puzzled look as he stepped back.

Sailor Moon stepped up next, drawing Ranma's attention back to current events. Reasoning that her higher-powered abilities were rather too immaterial to be of much help to a martial artist in need of techniques, Moon pulled off her tiara and fell back on the first magical attack she'd ever learned: "Moon Tiara Action!" The magical disc of light hurtled from her pitching hand and sliced a neat hole through the hitherto undamaged half of the topmost truck tire, before returning to her like a boomerang and turning back into a tiara.

Ranma boggled. Now THAT was a neat trick. It triggered yet another short memory, this one actually detailed enough to be useful…

_He was nine years old. A master of the art of throwing sharp objects was demonstrating how to fry eggs from five metres away, using only what could be thrown through a 30-centimetre square aperture above a frying pan. He spilled no part of the food except for a neat pile of eggshells behind the pan, and there were no shell fragments in the cooking eggs._

_"See that, boy? With enough training, you can get food out of any situation!" said his father, in what Genma imagined to be a suitable tone for imparting sage advice._

_"Wow, I wish I was as smart as you, Pops!"_

Ranma shook her head in disbelief. If only she'd known… She sighed, and turned to watch Sailor Mars throw fireballs.

Neptune and Uranus finished piling up the stricken remains of the heap and scuttled off to the side, out of harm's way. Mars sighted along her arm and cried, "Snake Fire!" An impressively large gout of flame, in the shape of a living serpent, roared out from the air in front of her hand and impacted what was left of the heap. The flaming snake coiled hotly around everything flammable and incinerated it all, so quickly that there wasn't even much of a stench from the burning rubber. Incidentally, it also scorched the left side of Ranma's disguise to a nice crispy brown colour — she'd been standing a bit too close, in order to see better. The disguise pen quickly repaired the visible parts of the damage as soon as the flames subsided. "You silly person!" said Mars, distressed and angry. "I could have really hurt you!"

Ranma went pale and trembled a bit, saying, "I'm sorry!" in a subdued voice. She was having a sudden flashback to that moment, during the fight at Phœnix Mountain, where it hadn't seemed possible to stop the homicidal Saffron from incinerating everyone. Naturally, the memory didn't include anything useful like the techniques Ranma had subsequently cobbled together to pull off a last-minute save. With an effort, she forced the subject to the back of her mind, and instead tried desperately to think of any way she might imitate a magical attack like the ones she was being shown, her brow furrowing in concentration. She stood, thinking, for long enough that the others started to quietly talk amongst themselves in the background.

Finally, she burst out with, "Argh, this is so frustrating! I keep being almost reminded of things, ideas for how I might do stuff, but they won't come out! I'll be stuck all month trying to get this!" She was vigorously rubbing the sides of her head, as though trying to work the elusive memories out into the open using her fingers alone.

"Wait a minute, I just remembered something," said Sailor Venus. "Back when I was fighting alone as Sailor V, I had a magical compact that not only worked just like the disguise pen, it could shoot a Venus Crescent Beam! If Ran— sorry, if _Europa_ used that instead of the disguise pen, she'd have one of my attacks to use! With her martial arts and a genuine magical attack, she should be able to keep up with us even in a real fight!"

"Assuming she avoided injury," pointed out Mercury dryly. "The disguise tools — and, for that matter, your various other gadgets — can't give her magical resistance to spells and physical damage like our uniforms do."

"Ergh, that's a scary thought. What if there IS a fight and the enemy gets a shot in? She'd be street pizza!" Jupiter was very disturbed by the mental image of that scenario, and not only because of her normal concern for a fellow human being. Since Ranma was disguised as Sailor Europa, the imagined princess of one of her planet's moons, she felt somewhat responsible for the hapless martial artist, at least while Ranma was wearing the disguise.

"Hey, no problem, I'm supposed to be a really good martial artist, right? All I have to do is dodge a lot!" Many of the flickers of memory had carried with them the flavour of Ranma's old indefatigable self-confidence, in addition to brief, largely useless glimpses of the various high-level moves Ranma had known of before being healed of the Cat-Fist. Her frustrated comments notwithstanding, she was feeling pretty sure of herself by now — while she hadn't figured out the magical attack thing yet, she just _knew_ it was only a matter of time.

The others all gave Ranma a _Look._

Sailor Uranus, who was standing only a couple of metres from "Sailor Europa," smirked. "Oh really? Care to prove that?"

Ranma smirked back. "Any time!" she boasted.

Without warning, Uranus hurled herself at Ranma, beginning a — to most people — lightning-fast array of punches and a leg sweep.

Ranma dodged all the punches, which didn't seem especially speedy to her, and jumped over the leg sweep, but was aware of something being slightly out of kilter. She saw Uranus begin another set of punches while she was hopping over the Sailor's leg, presumably hoping to catch her while she was in the air and thus less able to dodge. Ranma twitched her head to the left to avoid the first jab, but did it so quickly that Uranus had time to swerve her fist sideways and keep it on target. Ranma blinked and dodged back the other way again, but she'd run out of time — Uranus caught her a glancing blow on the left side of her face. Ranma went flying backward, leading with the back of her head as she impacted the chain-link fence atop the nearby retaining wall. The Sailors and Tuxedo Mask all looked shocked.

"Huh?" said Uranus in surprise. "I shouldn't have been able to tag her that easily! What happened?"

Sailor Mercury had her visor out, checking Ranma for injuries. "How many fingers am I holding up?" she asked the annoyed redhead, who protested vigorously before sighing in exasperation and giving the correct answer. "Good, it's as my visor says. You'll be fine, no concussion or anything."

"I could have told you that," Ranma grumbled, heaving herself upright with one hand on the mark where Uranus' fist had landed. "Ow. That'll be a nice bruise for a few minutes. I can't figure out what happened. Did anyone see?"

"You dodged so early that Uranus was able to change her aim and hit you anyway," Mercury said as she watched a replay of the punch on her computer. "Did your sense of time passing feel strange at all?"

Ranma thought back. "…Yeah, it did. Do you know what's up?" Ranma latched onto the first thing about the whole situation that made any sense to her.

"No, but a good working theory is that when your head was healed, it somehow messed up your reflexes —"

Suddenly, Sailor Mercury was interrupted by an anguished scream. It seemed to be coming from behind and below the retaining wall: "**AAARGH!** WHERE THE HELL AM I NOW⁈ **BREAKING POINT!**" There was an immediate plume of dust and fist-sized rocks as the centre of the retaining wall collapsed, taking a big bite of the wide paved expanse everyone was standing on with it. "Oh, that's better," said the voice, in more normal tones. "I'll be able to see from up there…" Sounds of effort followed, and the top of a huge backpack hove into view from out of the dust cloud, followed by the head of a boy Ranma's age, who was wearing it.

"It's okay, everyone, he's just one of the martial artists from those cheap magazines about Nerima," Venus called out.

"Oh yeah, I recognize the bandanna," answered Uranus. "Anyone remember his name?"

No one did, but by this time Ryoga — for it was indeed the Lost Boy — had struggled to the top of the slope, and stood staring in amazement at the Pretty Soldiers. He didn't notice Tuxedo Mask off to one side, but let's be fair, few seventeen-year-old boys unexpectedly confronted by nine beautiful girls in really short skirts are going to be in any condition to notice anything else — especially not one as repressed as Ryoga. "Um, I'm Hibiki Ryoga," he introduced himself, lamely, while trying not to be obvious about pinching his nose shut to avert a nosebleed. "Who are all of you?"

The Sailors, except for Ranma, all looked surprised. "You don't recognize us?" asked Sailor Moon, disappointed.

"Uhh… No? Er, sorry…" Ryoga looked flustered.

"Well, we are the beautiful sailor-suited defenders of love and justice, the Sailor Soldiers. Sailor Moon!" Sailor Moon struck a silly pose.

"Sailor Mercury!" So did she, but hers was more restrained.

"Sailor Venus!" So, in fact, did all of the others as they called out their names, proceeding through the Solar system until…

"Sailor Neptune!" Sailor Jupiter nudged Ranma hard in the ribs as the last of the genuine Sailors struck her silly pose.

"Uh—" she coughed nervously, "Sailor, uh…" Ranma paused, thinking, _Oh help! What was it again?_ Her eyes darted from side to side as she frantically tried to remember her code name, her mind having gone blank from the surrealism of the situation.

"**Europa!**" hissed Jupiter out of the side of her mouth, through clenched teeth.

"…Europa!" Ranma did the best she could on short notice, adopting a little-known martial arts stance that made her look something like a bowlegged chimpanzee in a skirt, only prettier.

"And that's Tuxedo Mask," finished Moon proudly, indicating Exhibit A with her left hand as he tried to look mysterious. It might have worked better if he weren't standing in full late-afternoon sunlight.

"Uhhh… Okay?" Ryoga was nonplussed. Then he fully registered the sight of the Sailor who'd paused while saying her name. _By all the gods! She's **BEAUTIFUL!**_ he thought, stunned into silence as he stared, mouth still agape. He charitably overlooked her peculiar stance. Maybe she had sore feet or something.

Ranma noticed that the real Sailors had by now all dropped their odd poses, and straightened up again with a sigh of relief. Then she noticed Ryoga staring at her with his mouth open. She wasn't sure why, but it made her very uncomfortable. "Um, are you okay?"

"Me? AHAHAHA! I'm fine! Never better! Aheh… how are you?" The glassy-eyed Ryoga was absently shredding the edge of his fighting umbrella in his fingers, out of sheer hormone-drenched embarrassment. Beneath him, his right big toe was excavating quite a large nervous divot from the asphalt as he stood with his weight on the other leg.

"Uhhh… right…" Ranma was getting seriously weirded out.

Fortunately for her, the real Sailors knew exactly what was wrong with Ryoga, though most of them weren't sure whether they should be amused or revolted at the idea of him going gaga over his sometime rival. Finally, Sailor Mercury remembered something important about the Lost Boy from the _Nerima Martial Arts Review,_ and whispered urgently into Sailor Venus' ear.

"Hold it right there, Hibiki!" shouted Venus, in tones of righteous indignation. "You're the one who beat that Unryū girl's sumo pig! We read about it! Aren't you, like, engaged to her now or something? As Sailor Venus, the Pretty Soldier of Love, I insist that you explain yourself!"

"Awk!" In Ryoga's personal universe, the musicians and huge drifts of flowers were suddenly swept away, as by an icy gale. Who expects an angry confrontation when they're in the throes of love at first sight?

Sailor Moon raised one eyebrow and glared with the other, à la Mr. Spock. "Well?" She was disinclined to view him charitably after this latest revelation. The same went for all of the others.

Ranma was puzzled. Why were the others suddenly treating this weirdo like he was cheating on his fiancée? He was only standing there looking stupid, not doing anything with a girl.

It should be noted that Ranma was, at the best of times, not often very adept at spotting subtleties in the interactions between boys and girls. Here and now, with her memory full of holes, the aquatranssexual was blissfully ignorant of most types of human mating behaviour, or for that matter human dating behaviour. (She did retain a vague notion that boys would happily buy her presents of food if she smiled at them and looked hungry, but she wasn't sure _why,_ exactly.) Fortunately, the Sailors and Tuxedo Mask — thanks to their uniforms, experts of long standing at keeping away from overeager admirers — were keeping an eye out on her behalf, so what she was forgetting was unlikely to hurt her.

Meanwhile, Ryoga's brain was shorting out from trying to process conflicting data. He was staring at the most amazing girl in the Universe, except — and this made no sense — she wasn't Unryū Akari who loved him in spite of his curse, and to make things even worse, lots of other pretty girls were glaring at him as though he were the most insensitive clod in the world. "Glerk…" he said, eloquently. "Uh… uh… uh…" There was a strong smell of scorched hair. "I must have them BOTH!" he cried finally, and then wondered why that sounded familiar.

Ranma twitched as an unidentified bad memory flickered in the back of her mind, then faded again. Why was she suddenly thinking of a wooden training sword, and the word "moron"? She screwed up her forehead and skeptically said, "Say _what?"_

"Urk…" Ryoga froze up again. He had a feeling that hadn't been a well thought out remark on his part. Fortunately for him, the human brain will — in most cases — eventually reset itself after sufficient time being deadlocked, and this did in fact now take place. "DAMN YOU SAOTOME RANMA! THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT!" he cried automatically, having found years ago that this explanation sufficed for almost any situation.

If looks could kill, he would not have survived making that statement; as he came further back to himself, he immediately realized he was at ground zero for a large number of beautiful but very angry female superhumans, and decided that discretion was the better part of valour. (Well, Tuxedo Mask was very angry too, but in spite of having been directly introduced to him by Sailor Moon, Ryoga still hadn't really noticed him.) "Uh — Goodbye!" he blurted, spinning around as quickly as his enormous pack would allow, and sprinted for the distant street — well, he meant to, at least; naturally, he was running the wrong way. Equally naturally, he forgot about the stricken retaining wall, and with a humorous squawk, he disappeared over the shattered edge in a huge cloud of dust and rocks.

When the haze cleared away a few seconds later, he was nowhere to be seen. The Sailors, Ranma and Tuxedo Mask all looked at one another in bewilderment.

* * *

On the other side of the ward, in a secret room under the Crown Amusement Centre, two beings who looked like domestic cats — apart from the golden crescent moon on each of their foreheads — were killing time while their young charges were enjoying themselves at the zoo. At least, that's how it had started; neither had looked at what the girls were actually doing in several hours. The black-furred one, Luna, had unintentionally fallen asleep on the desk, while the white-furred one, Artemis, was trying "just one more time" to beat a modern-day computer game that had been proving surprisingly difficult to him.

Well, fairly modern. "Modern" is relative. The blocky green letters on the black screen in front of him read:

**YOU ARE LOST IN A MAZE OF TWISTY LITTLE PASSAGES, ALL ALIKE**

"Rats!" he cursed. "Not _again!_ Gah!" He sighed, thinking, _Oh well… at least it wasn't a grue this time._

The outburst awoke his companion. "Eh? Oh, I fell asleep. What are you watching there?" she asked, peering curiously at his screen. "Hah! That again? It's been _years,_ Artemis. When are you going to admit that you can't beat that game?"

* * *

Meanwhile, Ranma's fiancées and their assorted hangers-on were heading for the Minato Zoo, the better to seek out Ranma's trail. The Tendos and Saotome Nodoka were taking public transit, and everyone else was heading straight there along the rooftops, just as Ranma had a few hours before. Genma had wanted to take the bus too, but his wife had indicated that being outdone in running across town by a shrivelled old woman like Cologne would be rather underwhelming in the manliness department, and shifted her grip on her sword in an entirely unconscious but very meaningful way. He had immediately decided to go with the roof-jumpers, supposedly in order to see first hand what happened to his "worthless son."

Soun had shifted uncomfortably, knowing that he was so far out of training he wouldn't be able to keep up while running that far, and — worse — knowing that everyone else thought this to be so obvious, they didn't even _suggest_ that he take the direct route.

It looked like the roof-hopping group would arrive significantly ahead of the bus riders, as their pace was set by Shampoo and Ukyo trying to keep out of reach of Happosai, with Mousse, Cologne and Konatsu angrily giving chase and Genma bringing up the rear.

Back on the bus, Akane was complaining bitterly about being the only martial artist in Nerima who was forbidden to run the roofs. However, her remonstrations fell on deaf ears — her father wasn't about to let "his baby girl" do anything so dangerous, and that was the end of it. She fumed and glared out the window, making nearby pedestrians unaccountably nervous, the whole way back to the zoo.

* * *

Back in Nerima, the Kuno siblings skidded to a halt in front of the Tendo Dojo, which was plainly unoccupied.

"Blast!" raved Tatewaki. "We are too late!"

"Never fear, my idiot brother, we need only consult my hired detective to find out where they went," soothed Kodachi. She stuck two fingers in her mouth and whistled loudly.

"Yes, milady?" asked the private investigator obsequiously, from behind them.

"The people who were here in your earlier report, where did they go?" asked Kodachi bluntly. "And I have warned you before about that ridiculous habit of turning up behind me whenever I summon you. Continue to do so and it will go hard with you."

"Err… yes, milady. The people split into two groups. One group jumped away over the rooftops, the other walked a few blocks and boarded the first bus for Minato. I understood both groups to be headed for that big zoo over there. Apparently that's where the missing persons were last seen."

"You have done well, man, thank you," said Tatewaki magnanimously. "Come, sister, let us away to the family limousine."

"Agreed. As for you," Kodachi fixed the P.I. with a glare, "I shall expect a full report before I release any funds to your office."

The P.I. gave a sickly grin and bowed politely. "Yes, milady." He slumped in relief as the flakiest parts of the local upper crust hurried away down the street, Kodachi giving her trademark hair-raising laugh as she went. This job had gotten a lot easier since Nabiki had discovered him lurking in the shrubbery and set up a regular information drop in exchange for a cut of his fees, but he figured it would take a lot more than that to make up for having to deal with Kuno Kodachi on a regular basis.

Now maybe he could go have a drink to steady his nerves. He _couldn't_ have really seen a man turn into a panda bear and continue talking, via signs of course, as though nothing had happened… could he?

Nah. Must have been working too hard lately. Plus, of course, that creepy laugh of the Kuno girl's would drive anyone a short way around the bend. _Alcohol, my old friend, here I come!_ he thought with determination.

It all seemed particularly unfair when you considered how _sure_ he'd been, up until the incident with the panda-man, that he'd avoided all of the little psycho's drug-laced snacks, too…

* * *

Dusk was drawing in over the Minato industrial area, long fingers of shadow creeping across the asphalt, as Sailor Mercury found a way to restore some of Ranma's martial arts rhythm. "It's a long way from a cure," she was saying to the others, "but it still should help quite a bit."

"How messed up will I still be after the fix?" asked Ranma apprehensively.

"You should be able to beat someone at Jupiter's level without much trouble, but if that Hibiki jerk attacks you before you get your timing readjusted on your own, he's likely to kill you by accident before he realizes anything's wrong."

"Oh, that Ryoga guy can't be that bad, even if he does stand around looking stupid a lot. Sets— I mean, Sailor Pluto did say he's helped me out of a few tight spots. He probably wouldn't really KILL me, very much." Ranma realized she was getting sidetracked, and wrenched her thoughts back onto the problem with her reflexes. "Anyway, it sounds like I need whatever help I can get, so how do I get fixed this time?"

"We need Prince Endymion and Princess Serenity to focus the Golden and Silver Crystals on you, and concentrate on you and the magical patterns I'm setting the Mercury Computer up to show them. While they're doing that, you'll be running through a few basic fighting exercises with Sailors Jupiter and Uranus." Mercury somehow managed to give this rather long explanation as an absent-minded aside, while she expertly used the Mercury Computer to calculate the optimum magical pattern to recalibrate Ranma's perfectly healthy but dangerously uncoördinated reflexes.

_"Both_ of us?" Tuxedo Mask asked, astonished. "Why does it need such a huge amount of power? That'd be enough to bring the Moon back to life! If we set up a lot of other stuff first, of course."

"Not power. Control," answered Mercury. "Having both of you focus the patterns at once, in sync with each other, geometrically increases the level of detail that can be achieved. Among other things, that means we can at least _try_ to restore Europa's memory while we're at it." She looked at the collection of sombre faces that were listening to her, and thoughtfully added, "Of course, the Crystals are also, as you point out, very powerful — so if you mess up, she is likely to be vaporized by the conflicting feedback."

"Hey⁈" This brought Ranma's attention sharply back to the conversation. She hadn't understood much of what was going on — for example, who were this Prince and Princess that Mercury had mentioned? — and her mind had been wandering.

"What are the chances of that happening⁈" asked Jupiter, shocked and alarmed. Behind her, Sailor Moon was giving the brooch where she kept the Silver Crystal the kind of look one might give a favoured housecat, on being informed that it had savaged and eaten its previous owner.

"Oh, with the rest of us here to stop any interruptions, there's only a small chance of anything going wrong," assured Mercury cheerfully. "The second cure should carry through with as much as a 62 percent chance of complete success —"

_"As much as?"_ said Ranma dangerously, her right eye twitching. For the first time, she wondered if these people were really as competent as she'd thought. Around her, the others were all beginning to look concerned.

"— give or take twenty percent. Hardly anything to worry about," continued Mercury happily.

_"Give or take?"_ Ranma was getting noticeably red in the face. Maybe this wasn't such a good idea…

Everyone else was frozen in horrified disbelief.

"And there's only about one chance in eight of an intermediate result like your innards being microwaved to cannibal perfection, too. So you see, it's perfectly safe!" Mercury finished triumphantly. "Why, I bet you wouldn't even explode!"

Ranma was by this point reduced to incoherent spluttering, and she was now certain that this was turning into an absolute monster of a bad idea. Meanwhile, several of the horror-struck Pretty Soldiers were turning unhealthy shades of green. Sailor Moon was trying to get the brooch off of herself, but she was trembling so hard from feeling ill that she couldn't seem to get her fingers to close on it.

Mercury managed to hold a reasonably straight face for a few seconds, then dissolved into a helpless fit of giggles.

Sailor Venus caught on first. "HEY!"

Mercury came clean. "Yeah, I was joking. Fooled you!" she giggled. Everyone else looked at her like she'd grown a second head. "Oh, don't be like that! You were all getting WAY too serious there. Vaporized by the Crystals, as if!" She kept on giggling for a few seconds and then stood with a quiet smile, waiting for the others to recover their composure. _Tell ME I need a better sense of humour, will they!_ she recalled, chortling evilly to herself.

* * *

Back at the Crown, the two Moon Cats looked at each other in bewilderment. They seemed to have picked a rather confusing moment to look in on the Sailors. "Did that make any sense to you?" Luna asked Artemis, one ear flattened sideways in baffled annoyance with herself.

"Mercury being playful? Not likely!" he returned. "And where did this Sailor Europa come from? I don't remember her from the Silver Millennium, do you?"

"No, I don't, but you know how badly our memories held up to suspended animation. Hang on and I'll check with the palace computer on the Moon."

Artemis nodded, and watched as Luna quickly entered a long chain of commands.

"That's odd," she said after a few minutes. "It just says 'Please ask again in two days.' "

Artemis looked surprised. "The Queen's doing?" he suggested after some thought, referring to the simulation of Queen Serenity that was watching over the Sailors from the backup computer under the Moon Palace.

"Looks that way," agreed Luna. "Guess we'll have to do it the embarrassing way and ask someone." The end of her tail twitched irritably.

Artemis flattened his ears and made a face. "Rats."

* * *

Some time and another impressive display of powerful sparkly lights later, the Sailors, neo-Serenity and Endymion gathered around "Sailor Europa" to make sure she was all right. "Wooo…" said Ranma dizzily, "That was… um…" She looked down at herself, as though only just realizing what her disguise looked like, and looked horrified. "What am I WEARING⁈"

Everyone else looked taken aback. "You're disguised as Sailor Europa. Don't you remember?" asked Venus, concerned. The same thought was uppermost in everyone's mind — had Ranma's memory somehow gotten _worse,_ instead of better?

This concern was quickly dispelled, however. "Yeah, but I didn't remember how girly this cheerleader suit is! You know I've lived my whole life as a guy, why didn't anybody warn me I was gonna look silly?" Ranma looked like she wished the ground would swallow her up in her embarrassment, as she tried in vain to tug her skirt down to cover more of her legs. She had worn even scantier outfits in the past, it was true, but only when trying to win a challenge.

If Ranma had looked any less distressed at her situation, the Sailors would have gotten rather offended at this double-barrelled negative assessment of their uniforms; as it was, they knew Ranma needed some serious morale boosting with respect to her self-image when female. Neo-Serenity, having observed that Ranma wasn't much on subtlety, opted for the direct approach. "You don't look silly. You're beautiful!" She looked around meaningfully at the other girls.

"Yeah!"

"I wish my hair looked as good with my uniform!"

"How could anyone as beautiful as you not know it?"

Ranma's reaction would have astounded anyone who knew her before her double cure, but she was a lot more comfortable with spending part of her life female, now. She simply looked stunned at the praise, and asked, "You, you really mean it?" She still looked ill at ease, though, and her next words showed why. "How — but how can I be beautiful when I turn into a, a boy? When I'm a guy, how can anyone be attracted to someone who's another **girl** the next minute?" She looked like she wanted to cry. "I… I'm sorry, I didn't know this was bugging me so much…"

Everyone else's expression had softened in sympathy and understanding. Sailor Neptune spoke up. "You _are_ beautiful. You stay beautiful when you're a him, too, you know. And do you know why?"

Ranma slowly shook her head. "No…" she said faintly. "Why?"

"It's because you, the person inside, doesn't change," said Venus.

"Yes," said neo-Serenity. "You're a good person. It shows through."

Ranma looked unconvinced. "Well, I guess that all makes sense, but it still doesn't help me not look silly. If anything, it probably makes it worse."

Endymion looked puzzled. "What do you mean?"

Mercury looked exasperated with herself, and smacked herself in the forehead. "D'oh! It's so obvious! If she's dressed as a beautiful girl and runs into some hot water, suddenly he's a makeup-wearing transvestite in clothes that don't fit!"

Everyone looked disturbed at this image. The logical next step occurred to several of them at the same time. "Oh, no," said Saturn. "What will happen if she gets splashed with hot water while she's Sailor Europa?"

"We'd better find out now, while it doesn't matter," said Neptune. "Mars?"

"Huh? Oh! Okay, on three. One, two, THREE!"

"Deep Submerge!"

"Flame Sniper!"

"Oof!" said Ranma succinctly, as she was abruptly flattened by the big ball of hot water they had conjured above her head. It quickly splashed to the ground and poured away through the gap in the ruined retaining wall, taking Ranma's breath away as it went.

"Well. That was different," said Jupiter, staring at Ranma's new look.

"I'm not sure what I was expecting, but that wasn't it," agreed Endymion. As an afterthought, he shifted back to being just plain Tuxedo Mask.

Ranma sat up, arms spread backwards for support, and looked with growing alarm at the nine astonished faces staring back. "Uh… What did it do to me?" One hand flew throatwards in horror. "Waaaugh! My voice!" It had gone from a soprano to an androgynous contralto.

Sailor Saturn peered at Ranma's hair in puzzlement. "Uhh… Europa, are you a him or a her right now?"

Ranma gave her a panicky look, then sat up straighter and frantically rummaged around under the still-too-short skirt. A shame that part hadn't changed…

"I'm a guy!" he said triumphantly, once he was absolutely sure. It took him a minute, because what his hand felt on the outside didn't agree with what the rest of him felt from the inside.

Everyone else gasped. "Oh, no!" said Mars. "This is horrible!"

"Yeah," said Uranus, "because you still look and sound like a girl. Well, you look like one, anyway, I'm not sure _what_ you sound like," she finished undiplomatically.

"Relax, everyone, I think it's just the disguise pen at work," Mercury said unsteadily, trying not to look as worried as she felt.

"Oh, that makes sense!" said Ranma, relief coming off him like steam. "I'm still disguised as Sailor Europa, which means I look and feel like a girl, even though I'm really a guy inside the magic disguise."

Unnoticed in the background, Uranus gave him an odd look. "He _feels_ like a girl? To the touch?" she thought to herself. Her mind immediately went to several places that would have had Ranma speechless and red as a tomato for hours, had he been along for the ride.

"Oh, that's okay then. This is so cool! You're as tall as your boy side and you have black hair, but you're still a Pretty Soldier like us!" Neo-Serenity clapped her hands in enthusiasm, and reverted to being just plain Sailor Moon, the better to bounce in excitement.

Now that he'd had a moment to collect his thoughts, Ranma was fairly sure he liked wearing a really short skirt even less as a guy than he did as a girl, but he didn't have the heart to say so when Sailor Moon was so happy about it. He decided to change the subject, and said, "Weren't we supposed to be testing my reflexes and stuff?"

"Oh yeah. And it's still my turn!" Jupiter called out cheerfully, launching a renewed martial-arts attack on "Europa."

"Hah! Bring it on!" cried Ranma joyfully, leaping to meet her in the air. After a flurry of movements that went by too quickly for anyone but Mercury's visor to keep track of, he successfully redirected the Soldier of Jupiter towards the ground, keeping himself aloft a few seconds longer — and incidentally changing course to dive out of the sky at Sailor Venus, who whooped and somersaulted backwards out of the way, forcing Mars to dodge _her._ Within minutes, everyone except Mercury — who had to stand clear and scan Ranma, darn the luck anyway — was engaged in a huge free-for-all game of Martial Arts Tag with three people being "it" at once, laughter ringing loudly against the distant buildings.

* * *

The two Moon Cats stared at the monitors in fascination. The game of Martial Arts Tag had gone on for over fifteen minutes already, with none of the participants showing signs of slowing down. Even Mercury had put away her visor and stuck her computer back in its hyperspace pocket, and was laughingly trying to tag Neptune. "Amazing," said Luna.

"Yes. Did you notice how this Europa's skills seem to be inspiring the others to try and keep up?" Artemis was mentally cheering on his Sailor Venus, as well as indiscriminately congratulating the others whenever they did something particularly deft. His tail swished leisurely back and forth behind him, its tempo depending on how the game was going. "Ha! Nice one, Mercury!" It wasn't like they could hear him, but a little enthusiasm never hurt anyone.

"Yes, I've been watching Europa — ooh, watch out, Sailor Moon! — and she seems incredibly skilled. Even Uranus can't lay a finger on her."

"She's definitely unusual, all right. Let's see, so far we know she undergoes a bizarre transformation in hot water, and she is using the disguise pen in some way, and she's an expert martial artist," Artemis listed off, thumping his tail on the desk with each point. "Anything else?" he finished.

"She claimed to be male inside the disguise field, but everyone — including her! — acted like that was a big surprise! How could she not know her own gender?"

"I'm not sure I want to know the answer to that… hey, what's up with her now? With him, I mean. I guess if he's really male we should use the right words."

"Eh?" Luna looked back at the video feed in front of her, not seeing anything amiss.

"Look at the readings of him the Mercury Computer is taking! He seems to be entering some kind of trance state, while still playing the game!"

"Hasn't slowed him down any," observed Luna, glancing over the numbers and then turning back to the video feed.

"There's something about these readings of his magical field, though… Hmmm." Artemis looked thoughtful, and entered a query into the computers.

"Yes, on the face of things it doesn't look that much like the other Sailors', but somehow it looks familiar all the same, doesn't it?" said Luna distractedly, staring at the data monitor again. "It's not just the disguise field, either. I wonder…"

* * *

Although the deepening shadows and loss of colour vision brought on by the accelerating dusk were beginning to make everyone's footing treacherous, Ranma was exhilarated from the game of tag — which was quite possibly the first time he'd gotten to just _play_ with anyone since he was six, and fighting his buddy Ucchan for okonomiyaki every day. Every opportunity he'd had since then, most of which had occurred in gym class, had been to some degree ruined by his obsessive need to win, no matter what. (Actually, the six-year-old Ukyo probably would have thought those matches were to some degree ruined by his obsessive need to win, too.) Considerations of simply having fun had been driven out of him by his training regimen — under Genma's tutelage, the only sorts of things he was allowed to have fun with were along the lines of successfully learning a new technique, or winning a match.

At the same time, though, something seemed to be hovering at the back of his memory, just barely out of reach. His eyes began to glaze over as he focused most of his thoughts on trying to recover the elusive memory, barely paying enough attention to the game to stay out of reach of Tuxedo Mask and Sailors Mars and Saturn, who were currently "it." It didn't seem to be a memory of something he'd forgotten about, or a memory of some stretch of time he'd lived through. It was more like… His brow furrowed. He was on the edge of something. It was more like… a memory of how to move… a muscle memory? Suddenly, it all came into focus. Ah, and there was even a target in the air before him…

"Hey?" said Sailor Jupiter as she descended from a leap across the yard, noticing "Europa" looking at her with a strangely calculating expression.

"Europa Hydrothermal Ascension!" he cried, pushing forward, out and up with both hands, palms out — that was how the memory went, wasn't it? — as though shoving something at Jupiter's descending position in the air. A faint greenish-orange light did flicker briefly around his chest, arms and hands, but something wasn't right… not right at _all…_

"Huh?"

"Europa?"

"What was that about?"

"What's going on?"

The voices all seemed so far away…

Sailor Saturn, who had been coming up behind Ranma to try and tag him and was therefore closest, could see — despite the rapidly deepening shadows — that something wasn't right with the martial artist. The martial artist who —

"Europa?"

— was face down on the asphalt —

"Oh, no!" She ran faster.

— and wasn't moving at all —

"Ranma?" She tried to find a pulse.

— as true night fell at last, with the finality of a guillotine.

"RANMA!"

* * *

.

* * *

END PART FOUR

_Latest revision as of Weds. 2008/04/09_


	5. Chapter 5

**Permutation**

A Ranma ½ / Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon crossover  
© 2004–2009 by gsteemso

Chapter Five

Not my characters — Ranma ½ belongs to Takahashi Rumiko and Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon belongs to Takeuchi Naoko.

* * *

.

* * *

"RANMA!" cried Sailor Saturn, frantically using her healing power on the prone martial artist. She was very intelligent and would not normally have gotten herself in such a flap, but she was also still a child… a child without many friends. Now it looked like she might lose her newest one before she could get to know her — him? Whatever — any better.

"His vital signs are back and looking good, Saturn. I think you got to him in time," Mercury said gently, putting away her visor again.

"Oh… good…" Saturn replied distractedly, drawing back a bit. "How do we get a proper look at him with the disguise pen hiding everything?"

"Here, I got it!" said Moon, happy to be able to help. She reached down to where the disguise pen had concealed itself in Ranma's Sailor suit's front bow, and somehow detached it from his person — though the others couldn't quite make out what she'd done, the dark of night being relieved only by the weak moonlight and their transformation-boosted night vision. The image of Sailor Europa flickered and disappeared, leaving a male Ranma in its place. He was apparently unharmed, save for the painful-looking scorch marks all down the left side of his torso, where the near miss by Mars' Snake Fire demonstration had burnt a big hole through his shirt and undershirt.

"Why isn't he awake?" asked Venus with concern.

"Aargh…" said Ranma faintly, waking up and immediately wishing he hadn't. His entire body felt like it had toothache. The terrible burnt sensations from his left side were more or less completely drowned out by the cacophony of abused nerves.

"Okay, never mind," muttered Venus.

"I think we should call it a night, everyone," said Neptune. "It's too dark to see properly for all this bouncing around."

Murmurs of agreement came from all around. With some help from Uranus and Tuxedo Mask, Ranma dragged himself upright, and everyone gathered in a circle for the Sailor Teleport back to the Outers' house.

The breeze blew softly across the empty asphalt where they'd been moments before. After a while, a figure under a huge backpack trudged up from the direction opposite the wrecked retaining wall.

"Hey, that's funny, this section of Yokohama looks just like that part of Osaka all those pretty girls were in, earlier!"

Ryoga trudged onwards, absently musing on the surprising coincidences in life. Then he slipped on the short chunk of pipe left over from Sailor Venus' demonstration, made a sort of strangled hen-squawk noise as he shot forwards, and went flying off the top of the retaining wall again, in yet another huge cloud of dust and rocks.

* * *

Back in the secret headquarters under the Crown Amusement Centre, the Moon Cats were having some trouble deciding on the most likely implications of what they'd just seen happen to the mysterious new Pretty Soldier. They had expected him to be male inside the disguise field from the preceding conversation, but for him to almost die from trying to use his powers meant something was drastically amiss.

"So the computer won't tell us what his role was in the Silver Millennium. So what? Even if he didn't _have_ a role back then, he still has to be a real Sailor Soldier — the magical linkage to Jupiter's moon Europa was unmistakable, even if it did look really strange compared to the others'! That leaves us with NO MYSTERIES —" Artemis flattened his ears sideways and stared straight at Luna as he said this, to emphasize the point — "to sort out, other than the business with the gender-changing. Even the bit with the disguise pen makes sense, if he has some sort of weird gender-swapping condition to cover up. Seriously, you're making a mountain out of a molehill here!"

"Okay, so he _scans_ as the real Soldier for Europa, if we don't take the inefficiency and bizarre dual layering in his planetary mana flows as indicative of anything suspicious. I'm willing to assume he's genuine for the sake of discussion. I'm telling you, we still have a bigger problem! For one of the Sailors to collapse like that when they try to use their powers means something's wrong with their planetary linkage, and we see from the monitors that his is indeed almost totally blocked — for that matter, one of the layers IS totally blocked! That should only happen if something's happened to his focus planet — or something's happened to his exoplanar power conduit, maybe — and that probably means a new enemy!" Luna glared across the desk at Artemis, wondering why he couldn't see the obvious.

"Well, I suppose it could mean a new enemy, but there's a much simpler explanation. Have you considered the possibility that the gender-inversion thingy, which plainly scans as being magical in origin, is simply interfering with the proper expression of Europa's powers?" Artemis looked smug, sitting tall with his tail curled into an upright question-mark shape behind him.

Luna sputtered in disbelief for a moment, and only with difficulty prevented herself falling off the desk in sheer bogglement. "You careless goof-off!" she almost wailed. "If there is a threat, it could nail us at any moment. If there isn't one, we'll only have lost a day or so looking!"

"Okay, okay, keep your fur on," soothed Artemis, somehow resisting the urge to roll his eyes as he turned back to the computers. With a sigh, he prepared to start examining Europa and its environs as closely as the recently restored Silver Millennium gear scattered around the Solar system would allow.

* * *

Elsewhere, in a place that in some ways was not truly there, yet in others was more real than anything on Earth…

The everpresent grey mists curled lazily back behind her, her path not merely obscured but _no longer existing,_ as she strode briskly into the presence of the Gates of Time. Sailor Pluto came to a stop directly facing the ancient artefact, and raised her Garnet Rod. "**Open**," she intoned. The Gates swung noiselessly aside, revealing more grey, mist-filled void. "Now for the hard part…" she muttered to herself.

As she brought her will to bear, the swirling grey nothingness faded into a peculiarly insubstantial view of the Earth from Lunar orbit. The view was of the planet just as she had left it a timeless interval previously, on entering this place-that-wasn't wherein loomed the Gates of Time. From here, the exact moment when she would leave that timeless realm was, inherently, thoroughly indeterminate — all that could be said with certainty was that some unguessable amount of time would have passed when she reëmerged, with a rather vague correlation to how long she felt she'd been away. This and other, more esoteric and abstruse, factors meant that the future became _very_ difficult to pin down, except in broad terms, beyond a few hours after the point at which she'd left the timestream. Only what lay in the Already-Happened could be viewed with any great degree of confidence, and even that got harder the farther back you went, due to the interference caused by countless other Here-and-Nows that had descended from other possibilities in the same quantum decision chain. Pluto had such long memories of having worked with the Gates in her previous incarnations that she knew these facts implicitly, and gave them no thought.

Besides, what she wanted to know would almost certainly be found near the present. If she could only get the physical location sorted out, that was almost easy. Well, relatively speaking, at least.

Sailor Pluto pulled a plush, five-caster'd, ergonomic office chair out of the endless nothingness around her and sat down before the Gates, already intent on the problem. The view of Earth through the open portal had already descended through the uppermost few cloud strata over Japan, homing in on the Tokyo area, in the few well-they-_felt_-like-seconds it took her to do so.

* * *

At the Minato Zoo, the roof-hopping party were gathered around Cologne and Happosai on the roof of the aquarium building, while the Tendos and Nodoka waited below, trying to stay out of sight of the security guards. The zoo had officially closed ten minutes previously.

"Akane saw them come up here, and there are two very powerful magical traces here. But after this cluster of machinery, the trail just disappears!" Cologne was baffled, and it annoyed her.

"She's right about the magical traces," agreed Happosai. "I think one of them is from some sort of healing spell, but I can't make head or tail of the other one. What do you think?" he asked her.

"I… don't know either. I'm sure it's been encountered before in our three thousand years of history, but finding the records of it might take years, assuming we could even figure out how it was written up," confessed the Amazon Elder reluctantly. "I don't think it's going to help us in the limited time we have before those magical girls make off with Son-in-Law for good. I'm sure their eye for a quality groom is just as good as ours." There was some uneasy stirring and discontented muttering at this comment.

"Oh, I have such a selfish heir! Why couldn't he share the pretty ladies and their magical underwear with his poor suffering old master⁈" wailed Happosai. The lucky few of the group who rarely had much to do with the twisted old lecher stared at him in disbelief.

"Uhh… wasn't Ranma-sama out of his mind at the time, honoured master Happosai?" asked Konatsu hesitantly.

"That right! HEALING magic, say old pervert! Strange girls must have try to cure husband!" cried Shampoo, struck by a sudden burst of inspiration.

"If it had worked, Ranchan would have stayed here in the zoo to meet Akane," pointed out Ukyo.

Behind her, an increasingly hawkish Mousse was getting goose bumps from a dreadful mental picture of a Ranma who no longer feared cats acting like lovebirds with his cat-cursed fellow Amazon. "Or he'll come swanning back to Nerima to poach my precious Shampoo," he groused, badly ruffled by the possibility. "Well, if that booby thinks he can come and crow in my face about that, he'd better be ready to duck!"

There was a slightly incredulous pause.

"What?" he snapped, having a strange feeling despite his near blindness that people were giving him a look of owl-eyed disbelief. "The lot of you are cuckoo," he muttered irritably.

As one person, the others shook themselves and silently vowed to ignore the armoury-toting quack, regardless of whether he was in a flap.

Shampoo cleared her throat theatrically and prompted the group, "I say weird girls try cure husband, but Spatula Girl say Husband no cured of Cat-Fist because we not seen him since they try, yes?"

"All right, but what else could they have been trying to cure? It's not like he was sick or anything," pointed out Happosai.

"Wait a minute, didn't Akane say the boy was a girl at the time?" asked Genma. "What if they thought they were curing his curse, and locked him as a girl again?"

"Even worse… It _was_ real magic they used… what if they 'fixed' both the curse and the insanity, and now she thinks she's a real girl?" Ukyo looked positively grey at the thought. _Poor Ranchan… Still, having a housewife is nearly as good as having a househusband, if it comes down to it, and I suppose we could always adopt. I'll just have to help the poor thing cope._

"Woohoo! I like these girls more and more as we go along!" crowed Happosai. He would have continued in the same vein, but he was unexpectedly interrupted by the sounds of a scuffle, punctuated by outbursts of swearing.

It was coming from the area where they'd left the others. The group on the roof looked at one another blankly, then hurried off to investigate.

* * *

In a gently swirling void that existed, yet didn't, Sailor Pluto smirked. "Jackpot! Ranma's plan will work marvellously with a bit of tweaking. 'What if now she thinks she's a real girl?' Heheheh. Perfect!"

She would have been rather less smug about the situation had she been a psychic and overheard Ukyo's subsequent internal decision on the matter, but that was a wholly understandable oversight.

Invisible behind the Gates, the stumpy form of the Murphy's Law Gremlin — which, as a personified natural law, could go absolutely anywhere that might one day hold a life form for it to inconvenience — wiped some sweat off its brow and brushed back its oversized pointy ears. Rubbing its hands together gleefully, it faded out on its way back to normal reality. "Ha! That'll fix 'em!" it cackled to itself, once it was safely out of earshot.

* * *

"PERVERT!" roared Akane, flattening a security guard — who'd had the poor judgement to grab her by the upper arm, thereby brushing the side of something he shouldn't — with a convenient fence post. She absently wedged it back into the fence with one hand and swept her hair back with the other. As the girl withdrew a bit further behind the shrub she was lurking near, she backed into Nodoka. "Oh! Sorry, Auntie," she said demurely.

"That's all right, dear," answered Nodoka. "Any sign of the others yet?"

"There they come!" said Kasumi excitedly, from Nodoka's other side, pointing up to the roofline. This was just like being in a spy movie!

"There they go!" cried a security guard excitedly, from the other side of the bush. There were muted sounds of scuffling.

"I think we've worn out our welcome, everyone — better come on," said Soun sagely, retreating — ah, _tactically withdrawing_ in the direction of the zoo gates.

As the others made their way after him, there came the uncomfortably close-at-hand sound of a panicked reptile wrangler, shouting something into his walkie-talkie. It was rather incoherent, but seemed to concern ancestors rising from the grave; he'd suddenly come face to face with Cologne in a dark corner, with unfortunate results for his underpants. She was less than amused, and bonked him solidly over the head with her staff, producing a fairly impressive echo off of various distant buildings.

That luckless encounter was followed shortly by a shriek and a gleeful cackle, as Happosai discovered that another of the zookeepers was a pretty young woman with — alas for her! — very good taste in underwear. By unspoken agreement, everyone began moving faster.

* * *

The last of them piled in an undignified rush through the front gate of the zoo, which slammed shut behind them with a sound of many locks being set.

"AND STAY OUT!" bellowed the largest of the security guards, who wasn't used to being flattened by young women and generally treated like a minor annoyance rather than a scary looming menace. He hoped no one else was going to do that. It was embarrassing.

Back on the street side of the wall, there was some awkward coughing and general milling around. "Oh, look, here comes the last bus home!" said Kasumi cheerfully, pointing down the block. By unspoken consensus, everyone piled aboard for the trip back, too dispirited to consider going the direct route over the rooftops. As they left, they agreed to meet back at the Tendos' in the morning, then lapsed into a heavy silence for the rest of the trip.

Shortly after the bus had left with its cargo of tired and cranky Nerimans, a pale blue limousine with garish Hawai'ian scenes painted all over it pulled up in front of the zoo. The Kuno siblings erupted from its rear doors and raced over to the admission booth.

There came a sound of muttering as the two read the sign in the window, Tatewaki's lips moving as he went. "CLOSED⁈ To us⁈" he bellowed when he finished.

"Outrageous!" shrieked Kodachi. "Come, let us go and stop them directly!" She leapt over the turnstile and disappeared behind the admission booth, her brother in close pursuit. There were a pair of simultaneous startled exclamations.

"Aha! Back for more, eh?" said the largest security guard, as menacingly as he could. He just couldn't understand what had gone wrong earlier. He'd never had to work at being intimidating before. To his disappointment, it didn't seem to work on these two, either.

"Stand aside, peasant!" snapped Kodachi imperiously.

"The Righteous Avenger of Furinkan and my deranged yet competent sister have business here this night!" agreed Tatewaki. Kodachi ignored the dubious compliment, in favour of wrapping a guard who'd moved behind her up in her ribbon. Scuffling ensued, which ended with most of the guards paralysed or unconscious and a pair of Kunos in hasty retreat.

Once they'd regained the safety of the limousine and were on their way home, Kodachi used the car phone to call the private investigator. The P.I. was no fool and had sent his secretary home before heading to the bar, but Kodachi left a message on his office answering machine anyway, instructing him to observe the Tendo dojo again in the morning.

"Good thinking, sister," agreed Tatewaki. "They are sure to meet there again in the morning."

"My thoughts precisely," answered Kodachi. "Ranma-sama, you will be mine! OHOHOHOHOHOHOHO!"

* * *

On the other side of Minato, Ranma shivered uncomfortably without knowing why, then went back to contemplating the guest bed in the Outers' house. He had only slept in an actual western-style bed a handful of times in the last eleven years — well, in a bed that he'd lain down in of his own volition, at least. He'd always just filed it under "a martial artist's life is fraught with peril" before, but with his new insight into the way _nice_ people treated each other, he was having second thoughts about his upbringing. He knew he'd had a real bed before the ten-year training trip with his father. Did that mean his mother thought a bed wouldn't have made him too soft?

Reaching no conclusion, the pigtailed martial artist sighed and got under the covers. It had been a strange and stressful day — well, more so than usual — and he soon slipped into slumber.

As the night progressed, he began to dream, reliving various incidents from the past year in Nerima in an entirely new and much racier light. At first the dream could only be called a nightmare — between the Kuno siblings, Nabiki's behaviour when he first met her, Sanzenin Mikado, Shampoo, Happosai, and every other pervert who'd groped or molested him on their way through town, he was developing some very bad associations with physical intimacy. He tossed and turned in his sleep, an expression of utter misery on his face, for upwards of half an hour; the only reason he didn't wake up screaming was that every now and then, dream-Akane would smile at him in that special way she had when she was actually listening to him and no one else was around, and he'd be reminded what intimate moments were SUPPOSED to be like. Of course, in reality, these moments had always been ruined by someone, usually Nabiki and their fathers, so the overall dream was still not at all enjoyable.

After a while, though, the images calmed down and gradually took a much happier tone, though that sequence of memories started off just as negatively as the rest. He began to dream of a time in a remote Chinese hotel bathhouse, when Captain Kīma of the Phœnix people had taken Akane's form via Jusenkyo's cursed waters, in order to steal back a magical heat-based weapon called the Kinjakan from him — only to leap into the hot bath, regain her true form and laugh at him, once she had what she'd come for. However, in the dream, Kīma rattled impotently at the outside of the window and then faded away, and Akane was really there, sitting right in the hot water in front of him and not turning into a Phœnix woman. _She's so beautiful, so… so_ sexy… _I can't believe I ever called her undesirable!_ thought Ranma in the dream. He felt so profoundly happy that he couldn't quite believe it wouldn't get ruined, like so much else between them had.

Impossibly, though, it remained just the two of them, quite nude; and Akane was wearing the kind of gentle, loving smile on her face that he'd only seen from her on a few very special occasions. It was, Ranma suddenly realized, what he lived for the chance of seeing again. He didn't know it, but he would have been wearing the same expression had any of it been happening outside his head, and in fact he was smiling in a similar way in his sleep. In the dream, they moved closer together in the hot bath, and reached out towards each other's hands. The auras of their fingertips brushed —

Ranma shifted in his sleep, a radiant smile suffusing his features, and awoke with a start. _Wha—?_ he wondered, looking under the blankets and paling visibly. _What the hell was_ **that**_?_ He shifted uncomfortably and, after a few moments of indecision, snuck out to the bathroom, his mind a whirl of confusion.

* * *

The next morning, Ranma was very uneasy and subdued. He kept expecting some one of his hosts to look at him with an expression of shock, followed by growing disgust, as she realized what had happened to him in the night. Then the all-too-familiar cry would go up of "PERVERT!" and they would all throw him out of their house. Heck, they'd probably hold him down and call Akane in, to administer "correction" with her training sword. He didn't think he could stand to lose his wonderful new friends in such a way, especially when he was just getting to know them.

It was really starting to _get_ to him that they were still acting all relaxed and cheerful with one another, barely paying him any attention at all, beyond everyday politeness and an apparently genuine desire to see that he was enjoying his stay — which was new and unsettling in itself, for Ranma. He was getting even more nervous because of it. When was the other shoe going to drop? Surely they could tell by now —

"Is something wrong, Mr. Ranma?" asked Hotaru shyly, leaning in front of him.

Ranma stared at her with unrelieved horror. How was he supposed to answer THAT? She was just an innocent little kid! (Bear in mind that four years younger seems like an awfully long time when you're 17.)

Ranma gave a small scream, and fled back upstairs to the guest room they'd lent him, locking the door behind him and pacing in frantic circles as he tried to figure out what to do. Hotaru gaped after him, blinking in bewilderment. She slowly shut her mouth and turned around to go tell her parents of Ranma's strange behaviour.

Five minutes later, Haruka and Michiru stood in front of the firmly closed guest room door, uncertain of how to proceed. Hotaru was safely ensconced at the dining room table downstairs, eating her breakfast and hopefully not worrying too much.

"Ranma? Are you all right?" tried Michiru. "Hotaru was worried…"

There was no answer.

"Ranma? WE'RE getting kind of worried here. Please talk to us?" tried Haruka.

"I… I'm sorry…" answered Ranma's voice through the door, quietly. "I, I can't… talk to you right now."

"Why not?" asked Michiru with concern. "Are you hurt?"

"Did someone break in and attack you in the night?" asked Haruka. She wouldn't have been surprised if someone had. From the sound of things, it had been practically a weekly occurrence at the Tendos' place.

"Um, no… I just… can't."

The two girls looked blankly at each other.

"Is it something we did?" asked Michiru. "What do we tell Hotaru? She thinks you're upset with her, you know," she added disapprovingly, exaggerating somewhat for effect.

Unseen within the guest room, Ranma winced hard, and then took on a resigned expression. He'd have to tell them _something._ Maybe if he was vague enough, they wouldn't catch on? "No, no, it's not any of you, I'm… just upset because of this dream I had," he said, cautiously.

Haruka and Michiru beamed at one another. A breakthrough! "Would it help if you talked to someone about it?" asked Michiru.

"Yeah, any one of us that you met yesterday would be happy to bend an ear," Haruka added.

Ranma blanched behind the door. With an effort, he managed not to make any noises of alarm. He began, "No—" but stopped as soon as he heard himself. He was _squeaking!_ He cleared his throat and started over, this time more strongly. "No need, really! It was just a really freaked out dream." On a sudden impulse, he added, "I think all that magic messed with my head a bit, it'll probably go away again." _Hey, that even sounded plausible! Go me!_ he thought proudly.

The two Outers were concerned by the idea. "You did get psychic surgery done on you twice yesterday," agreed Haruka thoughtfully. "Maybe we should have Ami scan you again just to make sure nothing went wrong. Did you ever have a dream like that one before?"

"No, never!" said Ranma truthfully. "It was just, uh, really freaked out. I'll be fine, honest!"

"We'll have Ami come over anyway," decided Michiru. "Better safe than sorry."

Reluctantly, Ranma had to agree with that. What if the scan showed something wrong? It couldn't possibly be healthy to have THAT happen to you in your sleep.

* * *

At the Tendo home in Nerima, the fiancées and their varied hangers-on had gathered around the living room table by eight AM to discuss the day's search patterns. Nabiki had the floor. "Well, the trail dead-ended at the zoo, so we're right back where we started. The Sailor Soldiers probably still have him, which means he could be anywhere in or near Azabu-Jūban. Having to include the surrounding neighbourhoods too means that's _not_ a small area to search, especially with a subway station right there. Has anyone got any way to narrow it down a bit?" She scanned the bleary-eyed group, not expecting any sign of a positive reply.

Cologne spoke up. "We know they used a healing spell, probably on Son-in-Law, and it didn't have the desired effect or he'd have waited for Akane. He either got better but couldn't remember what he was doing, or stayed crazy. If he stayed crazy he either still thinks he's a cat, or is just plain nuts. Also, all joking aside, they probably wouldn't have known how to reverse the curse, so he's most likely still female. So, we should be checking psychiatric wards and police stations for an amnesiac, a delusional cat-girl or a deranged but very strong martial artist," she suggested.

"I tried those already while we were waiting for everybody," replied Nabiki. "I figured that if I had to lose sleep at such an unholy hour of the morning, I'd damn well make good use of the time."

Cologne observed the way Nabiki was faintly vibrating in place from all the caffeine she'd had to ingest to get moving so early, and forbore to comment.

"I think the direct approach is probably simplest," put in Ukyo. "Let's just split up and search the place. It can't be that hard for people of our abilities to spot super-powered girls, right?"

This bit of ego-stroking made all the martial artists present sit up a bit straighter and feel self-important. There was no opposition to the idea to speak of, though the saner heads among the group looked less than fully convinced — surely, if it were that easy, someone would have found the Sailors already?

Then Nabiki unfolded a cheap tourists' map of western central Tokyo on the table, and such doubts were set aside as the all-important topic of just _who_ would search _where_ was broached. Almost everyone began speaking at once. Things only got louder with the highly unwelcome arrival of the two Kuno siblings.

Happosai watched the bickering and pettiness flow back and forth in front of him for a couple of minutes, then deftly extracted each of the girls' underwear from their persons, while their attention was diverted by the ebb and surge of the "discussion." He then faded out of the room, headed for his own crowded lair at the other end of the house. Behind him, Nabiki was cleverly manœuvring Kuno Tatewaki into staking out the Minato Zoo, the same zoo that everyone else had already checked out the night before. Naturally, Kodachi went along too, to extricate "her darling Ranma-sama" from Tatewaki's lunatic plans of real-katana-swinging vengeance. She would have been shocked to discover that everyone else viewed _her_ plans in the same light.

In any case, as Happosai made his way towards his quarters, he suddenly realized that he'd snatched Konatsu's unmentionables along with all the others. "Well, now, that's no good!" he muttered to himself, stopping to rummage through the slightly damp collection concealed in his gi, in search of the dreaded Male Undergarments that must surely be poisoning the feminine aura of his haul. After he'd had a good look at each of the undies, a baffled look settled onto his features, and he thought in disbelief, _They're_ all _full of female chi?_

* * *

In the Tsukino home, Luna was laying upside down on Usagi's bed, staring blankly at the wall with splayed ears and a furrowed brow. She'd been that way all night, trying to reconcile what Usagi had told her about Ranma with what she'd seen on the computers the night before. He wasn't a real Sailor, only disguised as one… but he had a genuine Sailor Soldier planetary mana tap to the correct celestial body… which had been chosen largely on a whim, in consultation with Sailor Mercury's extensive knowledge of science fact and fiction… he had no discernible connection to the original nine Sailors or Tuxedo Mask, even indirectly…

Even Luna had to admit that this seemed unlikely to be the work of a new enemy. Assuming they got his planetary power source untangled, he could only turn out to be of help to them — being successfully operated on by the Silver Crystal without it being alarmed by anything it saw in him, not just once but twice, pretty much guaranteed that he hadn't been harbouring any evil intent when he met them.

Luna's head hurt.

* * *

Artemis slept deeply on at the foot of Minako's bed, unaware that she had already gotten up and begun her Sunday morning routine. He'd gone cross-eyed staring at sensor readouts until late into the night, and hadn't been able to talk with his charge when he got back home because she hadn't woken up. He'd left himself a note to talk to Luna in the morning about a strange detail he'd noticed in the scans of Ranma, just before the humans had all gone home for the night. For some reason, the blocked-off one of the two layers in Ranma's link to Europa had disappeared when the disguise pen had been turned off, and his resulting magical signature looked a lot more like the others'.

Secure in the knowledge of having this solid lead to examine on getting back to work in the morning, Artemis slept like a corpse and would awaken feeling wonderful.

He never would quite figure out why Luna was so grumpy and ill-humoured when everyone met up later on.

* * *

Once Happosai had made it to the sanctuary of his bra-festooned room — which, naturally, was the largest in the house apart from the main living area — the shrivelled old pervert set his latest prizes carefully aside, and got to work clearing off two adjacent tatami mats near the centre of the room. Once he'd found all the edges — no mean feat considering the quantity of women's underwear that had been in the way — he levered them up and stacked them behind a heap of unsorted panties off to one side, revealing a complex and elaborate design carved into the wooden floor underneath, highlighted here and there with small dabs of colour. An observer would have noted several vaguely occult-looking designs laid out in the same space on the floor, somehow forming a coherent whole, and would then have prudently run away. After all, anything involving that many smiley and frowny faces couldn't possibly be good for you — especially since so many of them were a little… _unusual,_ like the ones that had oddly spaced fangs, or the wrong number of eyes.

［A devout monotheist might assume the diagram was for the purpose of summoning demons. That conclusion could only be considered accurate if you define a demon as "any supernatural entity that is not a monotheist's One True God." Anyone with any sense can see that summoning a _real_ demon would only benefit the demon. No, what Happosai had just uncovered was a generalized spellcasting apparatus, intended for use with the aid of various benevolent (or at least neutral) supernatural entities.］

Muttering and cackling to himself, Happosai lit squat, dribbly candles at an apparently random series of points in the diagram, among the amateurishly carved stick animals and runes of power. Then he stacked the freshly harvested undergarments neatly in a part of the design that resembled, depending on how you looked at it, either an altar or a dinner plate.

After a long interlude while he rummaged through various cartons and trunks barely visible amidst the heaps of lingerie, muttering and grumbling irritably at himself, the old lecher cackled in triumph and held aloft a highly disturbing scroll case. One reason it was so disturbing was that it was fashioned from human leather — which was fairly easy to tell once you had the thing in the light, because one side of it consisted of the skin's original owner's face.

The other reason was that the unfortunate original tenant appeared to somehow still be in residence. The eyes and mouth were shut in peaceful repose, and a faint but unmistakable snore came from it as Happosai set it down — face up, of course — by the edge of the diagram, and patiently undertook all the steps needed to get into the highly secure crate containing his most prized possessions. He opened the lid with a respectful flourish, and reverently extracted an item from the tangled jumble of the contents, shaking residual bras off it as he went.

He spent several minutes resealing the crate and putting it away, then took the folded cloth object he'd extracted back to the magic circle. He picked up the ghastly — and still snoring, just at the edge of hearing — scroll case as he went, and continued to the centre of a protective seven-sided smiley face embedded in one side of the design, being careful not to touch any of the candles or ineptly-carved symbols on the way.

A few words are needed here about Happosai's magical setup. The astute reader may be wondering why an athletically oriented panty thief would need a ritual diagram at all, much less such a complicated one. In truth, he had never needed — nor expected to need — all of the capabilities of this one, which had taken him nearly two weeks to secretly set up when his student Soun first came into possession of the Tendo Dojo. Still, the old pervert had been greatly relieved to find it was untouched during his long sequestration in a mountainside cave.

Happosai had been forced to learn the ins and outs of applied magic very quickly, in his early fifties, when the staff of several temples he'd offended the women of had banded together to afflict him with a variety of curses and nuisance demons. In the decades since, he'd managed to outlive most of those responsible — or, more often, fool them into thinking the reverse was true, which amounted to the same thing — and he hadn't seriously needed to defend himself with magic since the late 1940s, amid the turmoil of reconstruction after the Second World War. As a master martial artist (not to mention a notorious pervert), Happosai stood out in several ways on a spiritual level, and consequently looked more than usually edible to certain types of supernatural predators. He'd been most annoyed to discover just how many ancient evils had been released, during the war's many bombing campaigns, by the accidental destruction of their binding sites.

In any case, his magical activities in recent decades had mostly been limited to scrying, in order to watch naked young women from the comfort of his own futon. It had never yet worked, but Happosai had always been an optimist. (He was one of the Murphy's Law Gremlin's favourite people in the whole world.) Every now and again, he would also make the odd ill-advised and worse-fated attempt to split off Ranma's girl half, concerning which the less said, the better.

He'd only made the spellcasting layout so elaborate in the first place because of getting carried away; in truth, he'd almost forgotten how to work the thing, so seldom did he use it. Fortunately, he'd kept notes.

A wailing and a gnashing of teeth assaulted the neighbours' long-suffering ears as Happosai realized that, as usual, he couldn't read his own abysmal handwriting.

He cheered up again as the memory of this happening the last time he'd tried to use the diagram, too, welled up at the back of his mind. He'd remembered what to do eventually then, and that experience jogged his memory now. Cackling madly, he set to work. He absently reached into the open side of the scroll case (which lay along the face's forehead), and—

"Hold it roight there, ye sawed-off excuse fer ae moonkey's backside! What d'ye think YOU'RE doing?" it snarled, annoyed at being woken up. "Honestly, not aeven six moonths! How's ae body supposed tae get any SLEEP aroond this doomp?" It seemed quite unbothered by the irony of referring to itself in such a way.

"Eh? Ah, oh, sorry, Mac," apologized Happosai. "I didn't mean to wake you up, but I really need to see the Kūrimoruhon. The boy's found me a whole team's worth of genuine magical panties, but he isn't himself and needs help getting them to me!"

"Really? Ae magical panty team, ye say? Wow, I've na' seen one o' THEM in nigh sixty years! Hokay, at least it be soomthin' **important** this time," replied Angus Mackinaw the magical scroll-guardian, not just mollified but actually now quite interested. It opened the gap above its forehead wide enough for the irrepressible panty thief to reach in through. From the echoes, the space inside seemed to be at least as big as Happosai's whole room, though nothing was visible except the inside of the scroll case curving away from the opening. It was also lit by a flickering light, as of a primitive torch, and smelled strongly of juniper.

"Got it!" cried the old pervert triumphantly, brandishing a brass-capped parchment scroll. "Now to refresh my memory. I need something that's fast, and good at seeking what's hidden…" he muttered to himself, popping the end caps off the scroll and squinting at the index that took up the first foot or so of the revealed surface.

"Mebbe try an agitovisor?" suggested Mac. "Fast an' they've got the Second Sight."

"Aren't they the little tiny ones that turn themselves invisible and zip around watching everyone's sins, then go report them to the nearest interested kami?" asked Happosai dubiously. He considered the idea for a minute or so, then brightened and said, "Yeah, that's a great idea! My soul being so amazingly pure and innocent, the only kami around here that pays me any mind is Henkorōizumi, the Source of Old Perverts, and if anything, he ought to help!"

His mind made up, Happosai found the appropriate section of the Kūrimoruhon, and with Mac's occasional spoken aid, proceeded to summon…

Happosai stared at the creature. It stared back.

"What the heck are YOU?" he asked it, nonplussed. Whatever this thing was, it was a lot bigger than he'd been expecting, and it didn't appear able to fly at ALL. Most ominously of all, it seemed disconcertingly successful in the "hideous mockery of nature" department. _Have I accidentally summoned a True Demon?_ he wondered. _Nah, couldn't be, I'm still alive. And although it's way too big for an agitovisor, it still kinda looks too underwhelming to be anything REALLY bad…_

While he still had to look up at it, the stoop-shouldered creature in front of him stood less than four feet tall. Most parts of it either bulged with fat, or were horribly scrawny, and the apparently random distribution of fat and thin parts was highly asymmetrical. It appeared to have two of most normal body parts, four of all the bits and bobs that normally come in pairs, and a full range of generously sized sex organs from both genders. This last was hard to miss, as the whatever-it-was wore absolutely no clothing, not even jewellery or tools.

It gave him a long-suffering look, using all four unevenly set and mismatched eyes, and spoke — from two mouths, almost but not quite at once. "We are Anthrateel-and-Jorveyzh'ekka, the only succinubus on this or any adjacent plane," it said, in horribly discordant chorus. "For what purpose have you summoned us, O Dreaded Master?"

Happosai returned the creature's long-suffering look with a piercing stare, which didn't seem to have much effect on it. "And just what is a 'succinubus'?" he asked suspiciously. "I'm pretty sure I was summoning something a little more commonplace…" He left unsaid exactly what he'd been trying for, just in case. Supernatural entities could be touchy about others of their kind.

"We were an incubus, and we were also a succubus," the thing chorused patiently. Maddened by the horrible sound, a small housefly was immolated when it tried to fly across the edge of the binding component of the spellcasting diagram.

(A brief technical note: incubi and succubi — and presumably combinations thereof — are obviously undesirable, but few if any are actually evil. As nonmalevolent but sexually parasitic beings, they are more accurately classified with pubic lice than with True Demons.)

The bizarre creature continued explaining, "We were fused into one being by our last-but-three master, the Demon Lord K'ffjuu!ka. That entity tended to be infuriated by many things, our formerly unconnected selves unfortunately among them. For lack of a better term, those who keep records have since referred to us as a 'succinubus'. Does giving this answer fulfill our obligation-of-binding? May we go now? It has been over eight months since we found a hermaphroditic being we could drink from the sexual energies of, and our search pattern will soon become obsolete if left unwatched —"

"Sorry, not my problem," Happosai said briskly. "What I want you to do is find out where my young heir is staying. The poor fellow's lost his mind and gone missing. So, your obligation-of-binding is to locate the boy who wore… THOSE!" He pointed triumphantly to the ground in front of the creature's feet, where lay the folded cloth object he'd taken from the crate. "And the underwear of any magical girls in the vicinity, of course," he mumbled absently as he watched the succinubus hesitantly prod the mystery object he'd left before it. Upon inspection, the folded cloth thing turned out to be a pair of boy's boxer shorts, saturated with faded but unmistakable…

"_Female_ chi? We thought you said they were worn by a boy?" said Anthrateel-and-Jorveyzh'ekka in bewilderment, leavened with rapidly rising interest. It carefully ignored the muttered comment about magical girls' underwear in the faint hope that it wouldn't be enforced, as it was in no condition to fight anyone after eight months of fasting.

"Jusenkyo Spring of Drowned Girl," explained Happosai sagely. "Those are from the last time he was locked in girl form. Ah, that was a glorious week!" He developed a rather disturbing dirty grin, remembering how much groping he'd been able to get in on the boy-turned-girl.

"You mean… you'll _help us find_ someone who is of both genders in one body⁈ Oh, thank you, most kind and generous Dreaded Master!" The succinubus was overjoyed, and immediately accepted the final bindings of the spell onto itselves. It was gone on its search, leaving a few scattered tears of rapturous joy as the only trace of its passing, before Happosai could do more than open his mouth to frame the first phoneme of a protest.

"Oops," said the old pervert into the silent room, momentarily concerned as the realization stole over him that he had most likely just done something very foolish. "Good thing the boy's probably strong enough to beat it off," he rationalized to himself, before jettisoning the whole train of thought in favour of lamenting the passing of his most recently collected feminine underthings. The last one crumbled to dust in the dinner-plate-like altar area even as he watched, and he fell silent in a gesture of mourning for the departed.

* * *

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* * *

END PART FIVE

_Latest revision as of Sat. 2008/10/18_

A note on the _Permutation_ time frame: Based on the few hints in the source material (and ignoring the year given in the Martial Arts Tea Ceremony arc of the English-language edition manga, which I suspect got edited in translation), Ranma ½ seems to be set around 1990, or possibly a few years earlier. (I think Sailor Moon was originally set in the 1980s too, though I could very well be mistaken.) Back then, personal cell phones were bulky and extremely rare, but car phones were old hat — at least for the well-to-do — and answering machines were becoming fairly widespread, too.

I got the "entire body felt like it had toothache" line from one of Terry Pratchett's Discworld books (Sourcery, I think). I did try to think of a more original way to put it, but you just can't improve on toothache as a metaphor for the kind of pain I had in mind. It describes the dreadful gnawing, hollow, yet painful feeling in a single neat capsule.

I introduced two new names composed in Japanese in this chapter. Here are the approximate translations, courtesy of the free English/Japanese dictionary on freedict(dot)com. I have a feeling I mangled these; can anyone advise me?

• **Kūrimoruhon** — KUURI (abstract or impracticable theory) + MORU (to leak, to run out -OR- to serve, to fill up, to prescribe) + HON (book, main, head, this, our) — approximately, "Book that Serves Up (Leaks) Impracticable Theories".

• **Henkorōizumi** — HEN (change, incident, disturbance, strange ［the root of **hentai**］) + KOROU (old people, seniors, elders) + IZUMI (spring, fountain) — as stated above, approximately "Fount of Dirty Old Men and Women". (I'd prefer KOROU to have implications more of venerability than of decrepitude, but that dictionary site doesn't say.)

There's also a very minor joke in the name of the magical scroll guardian Angus Mackinaw (late of Scotland, or so he would desperately like you to believe). If you can figure it out… well, you will have to be content with the adulation of your peers, as I left all the albino dust bunnies behind when I moved and so can no longer award them to those who get it right.


	6. Chapter 6

**Permutation**

A Ranma ½ / Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon crossover  
© 2004–2009 by gsteemso

Chapter Six

Not my characters — Ranma ½ belongs to Takahashi Rumiko and Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon belongs to Takeuchi Naoko.

* * *

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* * *

It was a bright Sunday morning in the tail end of summer, the scorching heat of July and August having eventually given way to the calmer warmth of a sunny day in early September. In a large house near the centre of Furinkan district, Nerima ward, Tokyo, a vigorous and many-sided disagreement was taking place. The thin morning fog which had impeded the locals' appreciation of the dawn had long since burned off, and the sun was well into its daily transit of the sky, by the time this argument was brought to… well, if not an actual conclusion, then at least a good place to pause for a while. An unofficial truce having been declared amongst the combatants, they all made their way out to the street, mumbling halfhearted goodbyes, and trying not to look like they were hurrying as they headed out to search the Azabu-Jūban district of neighbouring Minato ward. Some of them hid their haste more successfully than others. Behind them, far from unseen but thoroughly unnoticed, Tendo Kasumi went back inside to continue her disrupted housework.

A few minutes later, now that they were more or less alone and had had a moment to think things over, each of the young women who'd been present calmed down enough to realize that they were missing some vital undergarments. In eerie synchronicity, threats and curses upon the bald head of Happosai echoed and resounded from all over the district.

* * *

Over in Azabu-Jūban, distributed amongst a variety of fairly unassuming dwellings, a group of teenagers who led double lives as magical world-saviours were also getting ready for the day. On a low hilltop, Hino Rei stood beneath the gateway to the Hikawa Shrine and savoured the fresh morning air. It was already heating up, she noted, as she turned to go back in and return to sweeping the courtyard — one of her duties as the resident shrine maiden. She stopped halfway through her turn and cast a puzzled look at a large black bird that was sitting on the edge of the roof, its unblinking gaze fixed with laser-like precision on… a patch of empty air in front of a blank wall? _Okay, that's a bit odd,_ she thought.

As she watched, the bird — a raven, an intelligent raven called Deimos, she knew but few of the neighbours would have believed — raked its gaze across the temple courtyard towards the watching shrine maiden, the apparently nonexistent target moving at a steady walking pace. On a sudden hunch, Rei performed that mental convolution necessary to see auras and other incompletely obtruded supernatural manifestations, and gave a small start. Sure enough, there was something there! It was a complicated little knot in the flows of the world, indicative of some sort of very small spirit. The fact of the entity's presence didn't surprise her half so much, though, as the strong feeling she got that the whatever-it-was was focusing even more intently on _her_ than she was on _it._ She noticed, without really thinking about it, that she seemed to have acquired a mild case of the hiccups at some point during the past few seconds, and tried to figure out what she was looking at.

The small figure seemed to have figured out that she'd seen it, for it suddenly made itself visible to normal sight and stood there, pointing jeeringly at her and laughing its tiny head off. Rei looked at it in disbelief. It stood perhaps eleven or twelve centimetres high, its totally hairless skin was a kind of granite-grey colour, and it was wearing a truly astonishing mishmash of a costume. Apart from a simple brass anklet, its clothing consisted solely of a gauzy pink tutu and a loose green mouse-leather vest, open in front, which left room at the back for a double pair of extremely rumpled-looking butterfly wings to grow out of the spirit's shoulder blades. It was hard to tell, when the creature as a whole was so small, but the wings had a badly moulted look, and appeared to be in dire need of some repair akin to repainting. The thing had unkindly laughing golden eyes, crooked and rather disturbingly yellowed teeth, and oversized batwing ears. It wore no sort of hat to cover its stonelike head, but it did have a rather nice steel stud earring in the upper point of its left ear.

Rei was stumped as to what sort of creature she was looking at. Given the feel of it and the fact that it didn't seem at all affected by being on hallowed ground, it was probably some kind of morally neutral nature spirit (of the variety Discworld fans will recognize as an anthropomorphic personification), but what type of concept it embodied was a complete mystery to her.

Suddenly, Deimos' compatriot Phobos burst out from behind a stone garden lantern, and caught the little nature spirit in her talons. Rei was so surprised that she inhaled sharply at an unwise moment, causing her hiccups to get much worse all of a sudden. On seeing this, the creature laughed even harder from its position under the raven's feet, apparently even getting a stitch in its side in its paroxysmal levity.

After several long seconds of this performance, the little spirit got tired of being stuck under a large bird, and did something about it. It looked up into Phobos' puzzled and rather uneasy gaze, gave a snaggle-toothed grin that promised great discomfort, and snapped its fingers. Phobos immediately started hiccupping, with huge body-wracking jolts — which looked very strange on a raven, especially a raven that couldn't stand up straight in the first place by reason of gripping a Hiccup Imp tightly in her talons.

As Rei rushed forward and Deimos fluttered down to help if need be, Phobos decided she'd had enough, and with a whooshing sound, assumed her humanoid Pretty Soldier Trainee form. The Hiccup Imp looked astounded, and disappeared from sight as the Sailor-in-Training's now much larger feet spread out to cover it. With an eruption of muffled cursing as Phobos' greatly increased body mass bore down on it every time she hiccupped, the Hiccup Imp finally decided it wasn't having enough fun in this place any more, and deinstantiated itself with a faint popping noise. Phobos looked smug, winked at Rei, and resumed her usual winged shape as her hiccups abated. Deimos deposited a page torn from a book in front of the surprised shrine maiden, and the two ravens flapped laboriously back up to the shrine's roof level, one to the ridgepole and one to the top of the main gate.

Rei looked worried and picked up the piece of paper. Phobos and Deimos, though they looked just like Earthly ravens — at least in their preferred forms — were actually Sailor Soldiers in training, from the planet Coronis, and they were even more attuned to the supernatural than she was. They had obliquely warned her of oncoming troubles on several occasions. If they were being cryptic again, it was unlikely to be good news.

The shrine maiden smoothed out the ragged-edged scrap of paper and began to read. To her surprise, rather than being the usual symbolic sort of thing the ravens left, which would lead her indirectly to the answers she needed, it was a very dry and unambiguous passage from a university-level biology textbook. The gist of it was that, for any resource — however awkward to use — which could benefit a being that took advantage of it, some unusual life-form was likely sooner or later to emerge and do exactly that. Rei turned this over in her mind, but couldn't see how it related to anything she'd seen recently. After all, even stretching the point, the only thing resembling an "unusual life form" she'd run across recently was that pestiferous Hiccup Imp —

Rei froze, her eyes wide. _Unusual life form…_ Could that be it? The thing was definitely unusual, yes, but did it really count as a life form? It _was_ only a spirit. She slowly relaxed again and absently put one hand to her chin, thinking hard. If the Imp _could_ be considered a kind of living being, one that would somehow pose a problem for the Pretty Soldiers to deal with, the passage on Deimos' page fragment implied that it was using some sort of natural resource that it hadn't before.

What THAT might be, the shrine maiden had not the faintest idea.

* * *

In his musty-smelling room at the Tendo home, Happosai was sitting happily in a heap of bras, thinking with relish of all the wonderful things he'd be able to do with his very own "magical panty team", as he and his rather lecherous assistant Angus Mackinaw ［deceased 1836］ thought of groups like the Pretty Soldiers. This could be even better than having Ranma's girl form all to himself!

Even with almost 120 years' rather unenthusiastic practice, the shrivelled old pervert could barely contain his excitement as he awaited the return of the succinubus he'd sent to find them — both his wayward heir Ranma, and whatever magical-girl underwear was in the boy's neighbourhood when he was finally tracked down.

* * *

Anthrateel-and-Jorveyzh'ekka was getting progressively more confused as the morning wore on. Happosai had provided it with an unwashed pair of Ranma's boxer shorts, left over from the last time the ill-starred aquatranssexual had been stuck female, and it was using low-powered sympathetic magic to guide itself toward the by now rather smelly things' erstwhile wearer. However, this only worked when Ranma was a girl — and every time the succinubus did catch a hint of resonance between the boxers and Ranma, some unlikely coincidence would spring up and almost immediately cause it to lose the trail. It'd known from the start this would be an onerous task, as it hadn't fed in eight months and was severely short on energy, but this was getting ridiculous. It was almost like the very world around it was conspiring to hide its target —

The succinubus stopped, and smacked itselves between the rightmost pair of eyes with the scrawnier of the two arms on that side. "D'oh!" it chorused, feeling stupid. It must really be getting weak, to not notice the Murphy's Law Gremlin's handiwork when the succinubus kept getting stopped cold by the stuff — repeatedly, and for more than an hour. The blasted creature's gnarled little thumbprints were all over this situation.

"Are you all right?" someone behind it asked, solicitously.

Startled, Anthrateel-and-Jorveyzh'ekka spun around as fast as its famished state and awkward physiology would allow. "Eh?"

"You looked really upset just now. Anything I can help with?" asked the blonde teenager who'd addressed it.

The succinubus was astonished, and not a little touched by this gesture on the part of a complete stranger, but it didn't dare get into a conversation with the girl — it was so low on power that anyone who really looked would soon penetrate its flimsy glamour, and it wasn't sure it would be able to get away if threatened. It had been able to teleport to and from Happosai only because the power to do so had been supplied, as was usual with summonings and invocations, by the old pervert's spell. "Ah, we were just looking for… someone, and we realized we were doing it wrong," it chorused cautiously. "We don't think you could help, but thanks anyway." It surreptitiously crossed five pairs of fingers, plus a pair of toes for good measure, and hoped desperately for deliverance.

She gave it an odd look. " 'We'?" she asked, puzzled by its eccentric phrasing.

Anthrateel-and-Jorveyzh'ekka stared back at her with a quadruple-barrelled deer-in-headlights expression. "Uhh… did w— did _I_ say 'we?' I meant 'I,' of course…" It squeezed shut three of its four eyes, gritted one of its two sets of teeth and tried not to bite through the relevant tongue with the other, and waited miserably for the shriek that would signify its glamour had finally failed.

At the last possible moment, against all probability, salvation came in the form of an annoying dingly noise from a device in the girl's purse. "Oops, that's my alarm clock! Gotta go!" the girl lied, with the ease of long practice, and casually turned to leave; she would of course have moved faster, had it been an alarm signal her communicator had just made. By a strange twist of irony, this carrier of suspiciously anachronistic technology was none other than Aino Minako, the Sailor of Venus in plain clothes — and one of the people Anthrateel-and-Jorveyzh'ekka was seeking, though neither party was aware of the fact. "Sorry I couldn't help you, but I'm sure you'll find your friend soon!" She ran off down the street, in the direction of the Outers' house, and disappeared around a corner. The succinubus sagged with relief and, before anyone else could doom it by trying to help, sidled quickly into a nearby dark alley. (That was a more complex operation than it sounds. You don't know the meaning of 'coördination' until you've seen a near-humanoid, with four uneven legs arranged in a horizontal row, try to sneak unobtrusively sideways.)

Once it was safely hidden, Anthrateel-and-Jorvezh'ekka vented a little frustration by quietly calling down a multitude of empty curses upon Happosai and the Murphy's Law Gremlin, the twin sources of its current troubles. It carried on in this vein for a few minutes, and was just beginning to feel better when a small, gravelly voice piped up from somewhere around its leftmost knee.

"Oh, really? Now that I call unfriendly," the voice said with a sardonically amused tone which, while not actually hostile, seemed to leave the possibility open. The succinubus' four mismatched eyes widened with horror. Only one entity of its acquaintance sounded even remotely like that.

"Gack! Bnirflad! What a, er, pleasant surprise to see you! What brings you to these parts?" it asked in its usual grating chorus, making a frantic but doomed effort to act friendly to the Murphy's Law Gremlin. They both knew Bnirflad was only there in person because the succinubus had been unwittingly trying to bypass the gremlin's probability distortions by brute force alone, something even most deities would normally have trouble achieving.

"I'm actually here on a _very_ old, but still active, protection contract," the short, grumpy creature replied. "With the Golden Crystal backing me" — _and isn't_ **that** _a change,_ thought the gremlin snidely — "you'll never, and I do mean NEVER, get near any of the people you've been sent after. At least, not in a way that would let you subject them even to something as mild as your summoner's little eccentricities." It would have gone on to clue the succinubus in on the chance encounter with the plainclothes Sailor Venus that the twofold creature had just unknowingly botched, purely to enjoy the humorous facial expression that would have resulted — but Anthrateel-and-Jorveyzh'ekka's overcrowded face was already looking pretty entertaining just from what Bnirflad had told the misshapen being thus far, so the gremlin decided to save that for later.

"Oh, no! NO! What will we do? We're gonna starve to death out here!" the succinubus wailed cacophonously, shedding suspicious-smelling tears ［because they were a potent aphrodisiac, that's why — "feeds off sex," remember?］ and suffering dreadful visions of beating itselves to death against a metaphorical wall of skewed probability, rather like a housefly committing slow, unintended suicide in a closed window.

Bnirflad gave the lust spirit's question some thought. It enjoyed making people's lives difficult, often to the point of actual fatality, and wouldn't have minded watching some good old-fashioned death throes — but the pathetic creature before it was a special case. The succinubus, while it hadn't been a project of the gremlin's when originally created (by the Demon Lord K'ffjuu!ka's hostile amalgamation of a succubus named Jorveyzh'ekka and an incubus named Anthrateel), was the ultimate tool for upsetting people in situations involving gender insecurity. The gremlin found itself thinking of all the pranks it wouldn't be able to pull without engineering the construction of a replacement succinubus, and shuddered. That sounded like way too much work.

The Murphy's Law Gremlin reached a decision. "Well, I'll tell you what…" it said, in its best used-car salesman tones (oily, in addition to being gravelly, rather like a rural highway in Alberta). "If, and only if, you agree to perform a service for me at some point in the future, I _might_ be persuaded to let slip a helpful hint or two…"

"So… we'd owe you one?"

"You'd owe me your _lives,"_ said Bnirflad, with an evil grin.

The succinubus shuddered, but could see it didn't really have much choice. "All right," it acquiesced reluctantly. The gremlin beckoned the succinubus down to its level, and began whispering in its bottommost ear. At first, Anthrateel-and-Jorveyzh'ekka looked absolutely gobsmacked by what it was hearing. As the whispering continued, first hope and then a huge, two-mouthed grin dawned across its grotesque face, like sunrise on an especially lumpy asteroid.

* * *

Back in Ranma's guest room in the Outers' house, he and Ami were having a quiet conversation about dreams. Ami was trying to see if she could identify Ranma's problem without necessarily relying on her Silver Millennium gadgets — if she was serious about becoming a doctor, it was a skill she would need to practice whenever possible. She was encountering difficulties in getting any kind of details out of him, though.

_Honestly, this is like pulling teeth!_ she thought, wanting to roll her eyes. _At least he's talking at all, now that we've closed the door so no one can hear… if I can call repeated statements of "It was, you know, just really weird and messed up!" talking, that is._ Gathering herself up, she tried again to extract a more useful starting point from the exasperating martial artist seated before her. "Ranma, I know I'm a bit younger than you are, but it's my goal to become a doctor. I take patient confidentiality very seriously. You _can_ tell me the details. Even if some of it seems weird or embarrasses you, I promise it will go no further than this room, and it really won't matter to me what it's about. Hardly anyone can control their dreams, you know."

"You mean like, what're they called again… lucid dreams? I heard a kid at school talking about those. It sounded like a neat idea, but I completely forgot about it 'til now because the fiancées started fighting over me again and I had to go break it up."

"Well, yes, but that's beside the point. Now, will you please start at the earliest point in the 'really messed up dream' you can remember, and then just describe what happened from then until you woke up? You'll probably feel better for having gotten it off your chest."

Ranma paled, but shut his eyes resolutely and began, speaking in a thin, quiet voice:

"I was just dreaming random jumbles of images and feelings, at first — you know, the usual stuff that your mind spits up right after you doze off. Then as they went on, they sort of started being… I dunno, sorta… like each other, a bit."

"How were they alike?"

Ranma had to stop and think about that for a moment. "Um, they were all about… people, I guess. Animals that're really somebody with a curse're still people, right? And they mostly were upsetting."

"What was upsetting about them?"

"Well…" Ranma knew he was on the edge of something important here, but couldn't quite put his finger on it. It was almost like, well, like he didn't _want_ to let himself know the answer… "Hmmm." Ranma had never received much training in introspection or meditation — Genma's unforethoughtful influence again — but he knew what kind of thoughts were THAT shape. "I ain't afraid o' nothing!" he muttered to himself, and began what was effectively a battle of wills with his subconscious.

Ami, who had very good hearing, looked surprised. She opened her mouth to ask how fear was involved, but then closed it again as she realized Ranma was a bit too… _busy,_ she guessed… to listen.

Ranma was discovering that when your mind has had years of practice at hiding something from you, there is at first not a lot you can do to stop it. He had managed to wring out an answer to Ami's question, though. "People keep… getting too close, if that makes any sense." He looked puzzled, and a bit worried. Was he becoming antisocial or something? That was bad, right?

Ami looked faintly puzzled, too. "So the people in the bad dream invaded your personal space?" she asked, to verify what sounded like the root of the issue.

Ranma looked blank. "Personal space?"

Ami was quite surprised. "You know, the space around you that it's uncomfortable to have other people get inside. Didn't you ever hear about this when you were little?"

"Uh. No?"

"It's okay, we'll just talk about it now, all right? No corpse, no foul, as my neighbour likes to say."

Ranma gave her an odd look at that turn of speech, but nodded.

"Look, let's stand up. Yes, just where you are is good. Now, look — if I'm way over here by the window, it's comfortable, or maybe even a little too far away to be convenient for conversation, right?" She waited for his nod. "Now, pay attention to how comfortable you feel, relative to how far away I am." She slowly drew closer to him as she spoke, stopping just under arm's length away. "Now, if I were to get much closer than this, it would start to feel kind of awkward and uncomfortable, right?" Another nod, accompanied by an expression of deep thought. "That's because this bubble of space, about 30-60 centimetres around you in all directions, is what we call your _personal_ space. It's considered very rude to get closer than that to someone if they don't want you to. You can tell whether someone wants you to be closer or farther away by their body language, and sometimes by them just telling you."

Ranma looked thunderstruck. "So THAT'S why I get so upset when Kuno or Shampoo or somebody grabs me! I don't want 'em in my space but they come anyway! Wow, I never thought about it like that before, but it sure makes sense."

Ami smiled and nodded, then paused, looking pensive. "Wait, what do you mean, 'grabs you'? Do people try to lead you around by the arm, things like that?"

"Well, sort of, I guess — a few times, anyway. Mostly they just sort of glomp onto me with both arms and put their hands in places I don't want 'em to. They often do it hard enough I fall over. Either way, if they're really on a roll they'll grab on with their legs an' feet, too. 'S like getting held down by a giant octopus, only not as friendly," Ranma finished, thinking sourly of the many times he'd had to fight Pantyhose-taro's bizarre monster form since the creep had given it tentacles, which he'd done by pouring cursed water from Jusenkyo's Spring of Drowned Octopus on his own back. Ranma grimaced. What kind of psycho would do something like that, anyway?

"That's… oh, I don't know where to start with this…" Ami had a bad feeling about where this conversation was heading. Based on Ranma's responses so far, particularly the bit about hands in unwanted places, the people he knew before coming to Azabu-Jūban had done a lot worse to the poor guy than just standing too close to him. "Let's see… have you ever heard of 'good touch' as opposed to 'bad touch'?"

"Uhh…" Ranma appeared to be thinking hard about how this could relate to the "good distance, bad distance" concept they'd just discussed. "No, but I think I'm gettin' the picture. I dunno as I agree there IS such a thing as a 'good touch', mind you."

_Oh dear,_ Ami thought to herself. _This may take a while._

* * *

Downstairs, Hotaru was working on a picture for school, done in surprisingly well-executed pencil crayon. The assignment was to draw a picture of her family. Michiru and Haruka were sitting across from her, posing together; she would add Setsuna standing behind the two after she finished drawing them. Though she was managing fairly well at staying focused, all three of them had occasionally to stop themselves from worrying about Ranma, who was really starting to grow on them. While no one would have accused him of being terribly competent socially back at the end of his ten-year training trip, he'd still gotten along all right with the Tendos, and later Ukyo. Now that he'd had a year of interacting socially with the same extended group of townsfolk to knock off some of the rough edges, he actually stood a better than even chance of being quite likeable when he met new people. Of course, how well that impression would hold up as those people got to know him better was still open to debate.

* * *

Ranma was staring at the wall with an expression of ferocious concentration. "So, like… when, say, Shampoo or somebody grabs me… _there,_ she actually thinks I'll mistake it for a 'good touch' so I'll want more of it?" His expression shifted to one of horrified disgust, as he assimilated the idea he'd just voiced.

"So I'd guess from what you've told me so far, yes," agreed Ami sadly. "If I had to guess _why…_ Well, she comes from a society that looks down on men, right? She's probably been taught that all men want is sex. She probably thinks that if she can persuade you to have 'relations' with her, you'll be brainwashed into liking her best out of the fiancées."

Ranma was turning green. "Why would anyone want to do… that… anyway? It seems like that's all anyone ever wants to do with me. 'Cept they more wanna do it TO me, than WITH me. Violent grabby girls when I'm a guy, perverted other guys when I'm a girl… Eeeewwww!" He had to sit down at this point, feeling weak-kneed with horror. "About the only one who don't grab me wrong whenever they get the urge is Akane… and whenever SHE thinks of something perverted, she hits ME for it, whether I know what she's screechin' about or not!" He looked comically indignant amid his disgust.

Ami was even more worried now. The people he'd been dealing with over the past year had so soured Ranma on personal contact that he couldn't even see the attraction any more? This was _not_ looking good. "Ranma, I know it's been really bad for you for a while now. From what you've told me, people either grope you or hit you when they get close, neither of which is the least bit enjoyable. I want you to think back, though… remember what you told me about the first time Shampoo saw you as a male, when you defeated her again? You said she got really close to you but she didn't grope you. Remember how cute you thought she was? I want you to focus on how she made you feel back then. What's different?"

Ranma turned her request over in his mind. He didn't much like what the answer said about everyone he knew, but… "I guess, well, now that I come to see things with you helpin' — I think she's as much of a pervert as Akane always says I am, but I didn't know it yet, then, so I didn't know to be — um. Er…"

"Cautious?" supplied Ami. _Heaven forbid anyone imply he might be scared of something, even with justification. His parents have a lot to answer for._

"Yeah! Like that. So I could just enjoy her… um…" Ranma looked bewildered. "I — I _liked_ her buttin' into my 'personal space'? What's that mean?" He suddenly realized _that_ had been in the dream, too, though the lingering horror of Kuno Tatewaki declaring everlasting love for him, at around the same time in his life, had largely blotted it from his waking memory.

"That's what I've been trying to tell you. If you actually _want_ it to happen, someone being close to you can be very enjoyable… even someone touching you, if you want them to." With a Herculean effort, she managed to refrain from blushing; for a severely repressed 16-year-old like herself, this conversation was a ridiculously intense test of professional detachment. "It doesn't mean you wanted to marry Shampoo. It doesn't really mean anything, except that you thought she was friendly. Oh, and that she hadn't gotten herself acting friendly classified as a threat in your mind yet. It was probably also a bit confusing for you because you'd only ever seen her trying to kill you, up until then."

Ranma nodded slowly, his eyes unfocused, as he tried to get a grip on these new ways of thinking about people. It had been a long time since he'd thought in terms of physical proximity being pleasant… or had it? The **end** of the "really messed up dream" suddenly returned to the focus of his thoughts. _Akane…_ he thought. "You know… somehow it's different when it's Akane," he confessed shyly.

"I think that's because you care more for Akane than for any of the others who want you. If she didn't have this strange conviction that you're a pervert, the two of you would probably consider it normal to hug each other 'hello,' and stuff. You might even have kissed by now — you two have been engaged for a year, right?" When he didn't answer her, Ami craned around to look at Ranma's expression. He looked absolutely blown away, probably by the idea of voluntarily kissing anyone. "Well, enough of that. Now that we've gone over all this stuff, what else can you tell me about your dream?"

Ranma needed a few minutes to marshal his thoughts, and struggled valiantly to say something that made sense. "Uh… well, basically, all the perverts I've ever had in my life tried to grab my, um, 'parts', one after the other, and it didn't make no difference to them whether I was a guy or a girl. I guess there were a few nice spots, too, like what we were just talking about with Shampoo, right after she decided I was her husband. 'Course, in real life, that went sour when she wouldn't take 'no' for an answer… Did I tell you she snuck naked into my bed and, later on, my bath — and both times Akane thought it was my idea and pounded me?"

Ami shook her head "no," and gestured sympathetically for him to continue.

"Well, they did. Um. I was talking about the few not-horrible parts of the dream, right? Yeah, well, the really weird part came right at the end. To tell you about it and make sense, I'm gonna have to back up a bit, though. Let me tell you about something that happened a couple of months ago in the far northwest of China, during the whole Phœnix Mountain mess…" Ranma proceeded to tell Ami of the bathhouse incident with Captain Kīma and the Kinjakan.

Ami was suitably horrified on his behalf. "She just laughed at you and flew away, after posing as Akane needing your emotional support? How awful!" she exclaimed sympathetically.

"Yeah, well, in the dream it didn't happen that way. Kīma rattled on the window and just sorta faded away, and the Akane who was n-n-naked" — Ranma blushed — "in the bath with me really _was_ Akane… it was, you know, kind of a special moment, right?"

"I think I get the idea, yes," she replied drily. "So, was that how the dream ended? That's not strange at all, you know."

"Uh. Well, not exactly… I, er, kinda woke up all at once when something really gross and perverted happened to me…" he trailed off, flustered.

"… Okay… You mean, something gross happened in the dream?" Ami was totally lost.

"No. In the dream we reached out towards each other, totally normal, right? — and our fingers were just about to touch when… _it_ happened…" Ranma was blushing redder than his girl side's hair, and was too embarrassed to continue. He managed to choke out, "Bed — sticky — _totally_ gross —" before words failed him completely.

Ami, utterly baffled, had to turn this over in her mind for almost two full minutes before understanding dawned, whereupon she blushed even redder than Ranma, her eyes going so wide that her eyebrows almost disappeared into her bangs. Aspiring doctor or no, there are some things a repressed teenage girl who is alone in a bedroom with an attractive guy simply is not ready to discuss… at least, not without a lot of embarrassment.

Ranma, seeing the sudden change in her demeanour, was horrified. "I knew it was something perverted! I'm really sorry. You prob'ly think I'm disgusting now. I can just grab my stuff and go, no need to upset anyone else…" he babbled desperately, hot but unshed tears of shame making his eyes itch.

"NO! Ranma, wait!" Ami hurled herself in front of the fleeing martial artist, only beating him to the door because his first instinct was to dive out the window — which turned out not to open wide enough for him to fit through. Ranma's luck being what it was, she ended up cushioning his resultant collision with the door with the whole of her body. Fortunately, she missed being hurt by the doorknob; unfortunately, the impact shook the door within its frame with a bang like a gunshot, and both of them hit their heads pretty solidly into the bargain. They slithered to the floor in a bewildered heap, flopping away from the point of impact as they went.

Naturally, this meant that when the other three girls in the house burst in to see what was wrong, they saw Ranma lying sprawled on his back with Ami flopped awkwardly over him, face down and with her arms up around his sides. Both were stunned, and making faint moaning noises. The three Outers stared down at this tableau in complete disbelief. Since when did Ami, the extremely chaste bookworm, act like this⁈

After a few moments of being completely flummoxed, everyone started moving again, and the two bruised people on the floor were helped over to sit on the edge of the bed. When they were again capable of focusing, Michiru caught both of their gazes and asked, very seriously, "Now… what was _that_ all about?" In unison, they gulped and looked nervous, only then coming to realize what they must have looked like.

* * *

Over at the Minato Zoo, the Kuno siblings had managed to gain entry once more, due mainly to the fact that no one who'd worked there the previous night had left a good description of them. Attendance had gone way up after the Sailor sighting the previous afternoon. Everyone was hoping to see a repeat performance. The Kunos, oblivious to the excited chatter all around them, made their way to the area near the tiger house where Ranma-the-cat had played Chase-the-String with the Pretty Soldiers.

"Well, my disturbed sibling, we are at the place we were told of. Whither do you suppose the vile sorcerer would have dragged the pig-tailed girl from this area?" Tatewaki puzzled aloud, scanning the crowd for any hint of the helpless damsel in question. "He would have had to use subtlety, as surely not even the fiend's black sorcery could hide a blatant act of evil from so many persons…" He wondered briefly if it was normal for a zoo to be so heavily attended, but then dismissed the thought as irrelevant to one of his lofty station.

A couple of steps ahead of him, Kodachi had stopped walking as well, and was looking at the few nearby rooftops with a calculating expression. She affected not to hear him, and quietly addressed herself aloud as though he were not there. "Hmm. The Tendo twerps said the red-haired harlot chased my poor Ranma-sama away over the aquarium." Which wasn't, in fact, very close to what the Tendo daughters had told the Kunos at all, but Kodachi tended to live in her own little world. "That's that roof _there…"_ She began walking briskly toward the end of the building she was looking at, intending to go around it; while both Kunos could easily have followed the trail directly across the rooftops, some inkling of the need for stealth if eviction from the premises were to be avoided had penetrated even their warped minds.

A few moments later, Tatewaki turned and noticed her disappearing into the crowd. "Eh? Hey! Make allowance for the noble Flaming Swordsman of" _puff_ "Furinkan to" _pant_ "accompany you!" he wheezed, rushing to catch up as best he could with all these damn peasants in the way. Suddenly, he caught a glimpse of red through some trees a little way off to one side — red of a very familiar hue, and at head height! "What! Pig-tailed girl⁈" Unable to effectively dodge slow-moving zoo attendees and think at the same time, the delusional kendoist was forced to stop again to consider this latest input. He caught another flash of red, still at head height, through the same stand of trees, and made up his mind. "I'll save you, my love!" he cried in what might have passed for a heroic manner, had he not been so obviously as dumb as a sack of hammers, and headed at speed back along the path to the nearest break in the intervening hedge.

"Did you speak, O moronic brother mine?" Kodachi asked, briefly distracted from her single-minded transit of the crowded plaza surrounding the aquarium. She had the indescribable feeling that the average IQ in her vicinity had just risen sharply, an impression which she had long since come to associate with a notable shortage of her eccentric elder brother. "Oh, where has the fool gotten to now?" she wondered disinterestedly, looking back the way she'd come. Fortunately for her effectiveness at searching, both Kuno siblings were tall for their ages. She didn't see him yet, but — "WHAT⁈ Do I see red hair, yonder⁈ So, the witch returns to the scene of her misdeeds! YOU WILL PAY, HARLOT! OHOHOHOHOHOHO!" She ripped off her dress in a storm of black rose petals, revealing her trademark leotard, and bounded over the astonished crowd in the same direction Tatewaki had just gone.

(Hey, for her that _was_ stealthy. She went around the hedge instead of over it, and didn't even gas-bomb any of the inconvenient commoners who were obstructing her passage.)

* * *

Several kilometres away, Kino Makoto (better known to the world at large as Sailor Jupiter, though very few indeed knew that both names belonged to the same person) was counting weirdoes on her way to the Pretty Soldiers' meeting. Probably the most ridiculous sight she'd come across so far this morning was an impossibly large pig, sitting on some guy in long white robes and cokebottle glasses, while a pretty girl in a kimono tried — apparently without success — to get a sensible reply to variations on the question, "Have you seen my Ryoga-sama anywhere?" The situation was made even more surreal by the fact that the dazed-looking teenager in the glasses, to judge by all the nasty-looking weapons scattered about with chains leading back into the youth's voluminous sleeves, seemed to have arrived at his position under the gigantic porker by losing a martial arts duel against it.

Makoto shook her head at the memory, and continued carefully along the street, pausing briefly to allow plenty of space for an overweight panda to roof-hop across the roadway a few houses ahead of her. She couldn't read the sign in its paws because of distance and speed, but she wasn't missing anything — the painted message had smeared in the wind, such that even Genma would have had trouble figuring out what he'd scrawled by this point. As he barrelled through the air above the street, the stealthy-in-his-own-mind panda touched down briefly on the hood of an unlucky taxicab heading sedately towards Makoto, sending the vehicle smashing nose-first into the asphalt and bringing it momentarily to a dead halt before it could pass her. The driver, who was based out of Furinkan district, didn't even bat an eye as he got the car moving again, though he did take advantage of his traumatized passenger's gibbering incoherence to discreetly add a few thousand yen to the fare. Those repairs wouldn't pay for themselves, after all.

* * *

Some blocks even further away, Usagi carried a sleeping Luna over one shoulder as she and Mamoru walked down the sidewalk together. They were enjoying the morning breeze, on their way to the Outers' shared home, when they noticed a tall pretty-boy type with a haughty expression, walking along a cross street with… surely those weren't _pantyhose_ wrapped around his waist? The young couple exchanged disbelieving looks across Luna's back, and by unspoken consent crossed the road to get a closer look. They caught up behind the corner, just in time to hear him ask an old man who was sweeping the sidewalk, "Hey there, old-timer, can you tell me where to find those magical girls that hang around this part of town?"

The old man said, "Magical girls? You mean the Sailor Soldiers? Well, I can certainly understand a strong young fellow like yourself wanting to find THEM. D'you know, they're so nice to us they show everyone their panties whenever they go over?" His grin as he shared this tidbit was truly creepy. Totally oblivious to the young couple around the corner who had apparently turned to stone at his words, he continued, "I heard Mrs. Nobakogi trying to tell someone the other day it's actually just the bottom part of their body suit, but we know the truth, don't we! Yessir, it's an old man's fondest dream in life to get hold of one of those magical panties. Until then we just have to make do with snatching Mrs. Nobakogi's when she sets the basket down on her way to the laundromat. Say, you want to see my collection? I see by your stylish waist-sash there," here he waved at the pantyhose wrapped around the younger man's waist, "that you've already started your own—" He was cut off by Pantyhose-taro's fist bouncing off the top of his head.

"It's NOT LIKE THAT!" the younger man protested, scowling. "I only need those panties to bribe another old pervert like you into changing the horrible name he gave me when I was born."

"Of course, of course, you just happen to be wearing ladies' underwear as a fashion statement TOTALLY UNRELATED to being a pervert — happens all the time."

Pantyhose-taro twitched.

"So what's this awful name of yours then, young man? If I can introduce you to the rest of us, mmm, _enthusiasts_ for the liberation of magical underwear, I'm sure they'll let you share in our information."

Pantyhose-taro's expression froze. He was having a terrible inner conflict between hiding his shameful name, and following this promising lead to finally getting the damn thing changed so he wouldn't have to any more. Ultimately, the hope of change triumphed. "I'm named… Pantyhose-taro," he ground out reluctantly.

The oldster's eyes opened wide. "Wow!" he breathed reverently. "What a glorious name to have! Why would you ever want to change a name like that?"

Pantyhose-taro's patience reached its limit, just as a blocked downspout above the two collapsed, spilling mucky water over him and triggering his curse. "MOOOOOOOO!" he roared at the unsympathetic heavens, the eel and the giant octopus tentacles on his towering form's back thrashing in angsty rage.

"Gosh, a genuine tentacle monster! Yes, young fellow, you'll fit in perfectly. Right this way!"

The cursed Chinese fighter blinked, so surprised that the flame of his anger guttered out. _Okay, that was different. What's a "tentacle monster," anyway?_ He'd always thought he was pretty unique, and yet here was this annoying old fossil, acting as though things that looked like his cursed form were common enough to sort into categories… Shrugging his huge Yeti shoulders, he followed the elated old pervert as the man skipped merrily away around the corner, heading back past Usagi and Mamoru.

Behind him, unnoticed, the hitherto happy couple exchanged shocked looks over the faintly snoring Moon Cat. After some discussion, Usagi continued on to the Outers' house with this latest intelligence and the still-asleep Luna, while Mamoru found a concealed spot in which to become Tuxedo Mask and swiftly followed the pair of panty-seeking perverts. Whatever mischief those two ultimately got up to, it couldn't possibly be helpful.

* * *

Back at the Tendo home, Happosai was still waiting on Anthrateel-and-Jorveyzh'ekka. The old pervert's patience had run out some time ago, but with Genma and Soun out looking for Ranma with the others, there was nothing handy for him to vent his frustrations on except his precious collection, which was hardly a realistic option. He couldn't even go check out the neighbours' clotheslines for new silken treasures to liberate, in case the dratted spirit escaped its contract while he was distracted. Sometimes it sucked being such a responsible adult.

_Despite the fact that it was not currently manifested anywhere and therefore had no body to do it with, Bnirflad the Murphy's Law Gremlin fell over laughing. Happosai possessed better entertainment value than a misplaced chimpanzee, at least to an entity that by nature read the minds of whomever it was observing, the better to inflict maximum irony on its victims._

The succinubus itself, meanwhile, was searching through Cologne's private storeroom, in the cellars of the Cat Café. Getting in hadn't been a problem — neither succubi nor incubi had ever paid much attention to unwarded walls or doors, usually travelling relative to energy flows and other beings rather than to the unliving background of physical reality, which they tended not to notice. Cologne's storeroom _had_ been warded, so Anthrateel-and-Jorveyzh'ekka had had to enter through the ceiling, but that hadn't really made much difference to the twofold lust spirit.

"Aha!" it chorused with glee, holding up a small hardwood cask filled with something that sloshed. Faded Chinese characters on the lid could just be made out in the dim light of the storeroom. Anthrateel-and-Jorveyzh'ekka tittered giddily, somehow tucked the cask out of sight despite the fact that the succinubus was totally nude, and left the same way it had come.

* * *

A few minutes later, it drifted into Happosai's musty room. The shrivelled old lecher perked up on seeing it, but quickly lapsed into a sulky frown when he saw it wasn't apparently carrying anything.

"What happened?" he demanded of it, petulantly. "You were gone for hours!"

"We're very sorry, O Dreaded Master, but the parties you had us seek were protected by very powerful magic which we were unable to overcome," it droned, in tones which somehow contrived to be simultaneously discordant and disinterested.

Happosai looked surprised. "Even the boy?" he asked. "Why would _he_ have been covered?"

Anthrateel-and-Jorveyzh'ekka bowed its head contritely. "We don't know, Master. Maybe he was with the magical girls you described? Finding _him_ would then have found _them,_ and there was some fearsome protection against that eventuality…" It shuddered slightly in remembrance.

"Hmm." Happosai, his incipient tantrum forgotten, turned this over in his mind for a few minutes, before shrugging and deciding to give the dratted spirit a task it could actually DO this time. "All right then, since you couldn't do what I wanted before, to pay me for those irreplaceable girl-scented treasures the summoning spell ate, I want you … to … um. No, that wouldn't work… or… nah. How about… No, maybe not. Ah! I know!" He put one foot atop a heap of bras and raised his arm in a heroic pose, as he relayed the final results of his genius to the waiting succinubus. "Find for me the woman with the biggest natural bosom on Earth, and bring me all her lingerie, especially what she's wearing!" he finished triumphantly.

Anthrateel-and-Jorveyzh'ekka took on a thoughtful expression, insofar as Happosai could determine amidst its surfeit of facial features, and was motionless for a few minutes. "Yeah, that one could work," it concluded finally. "Looking at all the women in the world should only take us about 200 years or so, too!" it added, smiling serenely with one set of facial features and with vacant cheerfulness with the other. Since the two sets of features were all jumbled together on its single face, this was a bit disconcerting.

Happosai did a double take. "Come again?"

"We met our half of the deal to the best of our ability — we brought back intelligence on your targets, even if we weren't able to grab the targets themselves. According to the terms of the magical contract, you are now obligated to provide us with 'someone who is of both genders in one body' as payment."

"Now hold on just a—"

"And, seeing as you've mislaid the only one of those you had handy and we don't want to hang around this nuthouse any longer than we have to, we've decided to help you!" Both of its grins now stretched from ear to misaligned ear and looked absolutely terrifying, which was quite an achievement for mouths whose original design goal was seduction.

"Help me?" echoed the panty thief dumbly, momentarily too off-balance to act.

"Sure. Like this!" In one quick motion, Anthrateel-and-Jorveyzh'ekka whipped its pilfered cask out from… somewhere… and poured the contents over Happosai's head.

"What was that⁈" The ancient martial artist made an abortive blocking motion, but knew it was too little, too late — even as the cask gently spun around on the floor, revealing the label on the lid:

泉溺娘

"Spring of Drowned _Girl⁈"_ Happosai felt around her new body from both within and without, trying frantically to adjust her unaccustomed and yet horribly familiar new chi patterns into something that would help her get out of this mess. Even as she did so, she noticed that she seemed to have gotten a lot younger. Under the circumstances, this came as a decidedly mixed blessing.

She was quite correct about her partial rejuvenation, too. In a particularly cruel twist of irony, the Pools of Sorrow tended to try for the best possible result (as limited by the subject's health and DNA) when they created their victims' new forms — which, for those with human curses, often meant people found their cursed form more attractive than their original one. In Happosai's case, all of this meant that he was now a moderately — _very_ moderately — attractive thirtysomething woman, and even possessed a nearly complete head of hair. She was still absurdly short of stature, though.

Grinning hugely, the succinubus whipped out a dribbling garden hose and a king-sized steaming kettle, and got ready to pounce. "SWEETO!"

Happosai, her eyes bulging, appeared to have turned to stone. Anthrateel-and-Jorveyzh'ekka paused. Something was a bit off about this…

"Heh. Nearly forgot!" With a strangely intriguing and totally indescribable _shifting,_ the misshapen being assumed the rivetingly attractive feminine form it had inherited from the succubus Jorveyzh'ekka, so many centuries before. (Incubi and succubi are designed to be sexually irresistible, meaning they can alter their appearance at will, but it does require effort on their part. This meant that the world's only succinubus was quite capable of spending all the feeding time it wanted in one form or the other, provided it could use both forms in succession on the same partner — or, even better, in alternation.)

After a shocked pause, Happosai reanimated and blinked a couple of times. "Eh?" _That was horrible, but there's a pretty lady there now! I must have imagined it before, right?_ She failed to register that the hosepipe and the kettle were still present. _Of course I'm right, I'm just that amazing. Only thing missing now is some silky darlings for her!_ "WOOHOO!" Recovering with remarkable swiftness, her unwanted femininity temporarily forgotten even as she took full advantage of her newfound youth, she pounced at the alluring bosom in front of her, snagging some of the nicer specimens of nearby lingerie as she went.

Contrary to the usual script in these situations, she was met halfway by the succinubus' own pounce, and they rolled into a heap of miscellaneous women's underwear, hands and lips already busy. Within minutes, Anthrateel-and-Jorveyzh'ekka's unique pheromones and Happosai's rejuvenated horniness had combined to so thoroughly seduce the ancient Grandmaster that, after half an hour, (s)he was lost in shared pleasure and was no longer registering what form either of them was in.

They were busy for a long time — the succinubus had been starving, and even at his/her age, Happosai had chi to burn and a martial artist's stamina.

* * *

Back in the guest room at the Outers' house, Hotaru, Michiru, Haruka, Ranma, and Ami were sitting in a row on the edge of Ranma's bed, talking about his racy dream. The conversation was conducted with a great deal of blushing and embarrassment all around; the four powered-down Pretty Soldiers liked Ranma, but had only known him less than a day, and two of them had never expected to have a conversation like this with any sort of male, even if he was sometimes a she.

"I know you all keep telling me it is, but… how can anything so gross and messy possibly be normal?" Ranma asked plaintively. The girls looked at each other, silently begging one another to answer so they wouldn't have to.

After an awkward moment, Michiru spoke up, her blush renewed. "It happens to everyone, Ranma-san," she began tentatively. The impersonal honorific helped her keep calm. "Girls, boys, anyone who gets old enough to hit puberty."

"It's true," agreed Ami, trying hard to pretend she was a real doctor in order to forestall seriously freaking out. "It's actually a good sign — it means your, uh, parts are all working properly." She paused, her brow creasing, as something occurred to her. "Um, at least I think so — now I come to think of it, you've told us how embarrassing it was, but that's all. Dreams like that are also supposed to include an, um, o-orgasm… ah, er, didn't yours?" She cleared her throat nervously.

Ranma froze, blushing almost purple. "Eeep!" He looked at the way the four girls were all staring at him with wide, expectant eyes and a matching quartet of nuclear blushes, and tried to shrink into his shirt. "W-well… yeah," he choked out, "but I, um, uhh… Isn't that, like, really bad and perverted?" He looked down at his hands, not wanting to see the expressions of distaste he expected them to have while talking about what, in his mind, was truly gross, disgusting and crude behaviour. After all, the only other people he'd ever heard discussing this sort of thing were Hiroshi and Daisuke, in the locker room at school, and just look what everyone thought of _them!_

Haruka, in fact, did look appalled, but she was upset with the people who had conditioned Ranma to think that way about part of himself, not with him for being "disgusting." "Of course it isn't!" she declared firmly. "Everyone who's hit puberty is supposed to get those too, though I understand some unlucky girls have trouble in that area."

Ranma blinked, looking up at her in wide-eyed amazement. "Really⁈ You mean you've had one too?" he blurted innocently. The girls all choked up and stopped moving for an instant, as did Ranma when he realized what he'd just said.

Michiru spluttered for a brief moment, then dissolved into a helpless fit of rogue giggles as she glanced sidelong at her lover, Haruka.

Hotaru hid her face in her hands, and wished she'd had the sense to leave earlier — doing it now would draw the others' attention, and she wasn't sure she'd survive the embarrassment. On the other hand, she didn't see how she could possibly get any MORE embarrassed… Nah, best not to risk finding out. It didn't help any that she was getting very hot and bothered from the explicit subject matter, and in the manner of all shy youngsters who are new to the whole "horniness" thing, she was reluctant to move very much because of the embarrassing stimulation from her clothes that would result.

Haruka, of course, just gave a knowing smirk with one eyebrow raised, and asked Ranma, "Well, now, wouldn't you like to know?"

Michiru snapped out of her giggle fit and swatted Haruka on the elbow. "Play nice, or no 'games' later on!" she ordered, with mock sternness.

"Okay, okay, keep your hair on! Yes, Ranma, Michiru and I have given one another lots of lovely orgasms, and I'm sure Ami knows all about them too."

On Ranma's other side, Ami squeaked faintly and tried desperately to pretend Haruka hadn't just said that. _I'm too shy for this!_ she thought. _What if he asks me about it directly? NOOOOO! I'm too young to die of embarrassment!_

Ranma himself blurted out, "What about Hotaru-chan? She's old enough, isn't she?" before he could stop himself.

Haruka turned to stone beside him, Michiru immediately entered brainlock with her eyes and mouth jammed wide open, and Hotaru found out — to her horror — that she COULD, in fact, get more embarrassed. Lacking any immediate means of escape, she nodded a very timid affirmative to Ranma, before latching onto Michiru's shirt and hiding her face in the older girl's back.

Ami, who was quietly losing all hope of regaining her composure, sought desperately for something to say to relieve the awkward silence that had fallen. Unfortunately, she uncharacteristically blurted out the first thing that came to mind, in tones of astonished disbelief — which was, in its entirety, "That wasn't your _first ever_ orgasm, was it, Ranma?"

"Um. Maybe?" Ranma wasn't sure whether it would be worse to answer "yes", or to lie by denying it. Truth be known, he hadn't even been sure what an orgasm _was,_ until the unambiguous references in the current conversation to what he'd experienced overnight.

The awkward silence got even heavier.

"…Guh?" asked Haruka dazedly, beginning to recover.

By this point, Ami was far beyond help. "But, but, doesn't it work properly when you masturbate⁈" she asked, more than a little desperately. An expression of absolute denial that she could have just said such a thing settled onto her face, and it was her turn to enter brainlock.

Ranma looked blankly at her and, seeing she was temporarily unavailable, asked Haruka and Michiru instead: "What does 'masherbake' mean?"

* * *

Downstairs at the Tendos' place, Kasumi was having trouble focusing on her housework. Something about the house's ambient chi patterns, the "wa" (overall aura) of the place, had changed fairly significantly. There was a lot more chi flowing around than usual, and most of it seemed to be rather… _charged,_ to put it mildly. Erotically so, in point of fact (Kasumi blushed). Oh, was it ever!

Shrugging, she decided it wasn't really that surprising, considering whose room the disturbance appeared to be coming from. She was a bit puzzled by the moans of ecstasy, though. Where had Happosai managed to find a woman who would so much as let him come near her, much less make love to her? She blinked in disbelief, and a near-terminal dose of bewilderment, as a _second_ voice replaced the first. TWO women moaning joyously in the old man's room made even less sense than ONE did, but for obvious reasons, Kasumi was hardly about to go in and investigate.

Understandably, the thought that Happosai might _be_ one of the ecstatic women never occurred to her, which was fortunate for the long-deceased tatters of the old goat's dignity, if nothing else.

* * *

A kilometre or so away from the Outers' home, Rei was headed over for the meeting just like the other Pretty Soldiers, but she was making slower progress than anyone else because she was keeping a sharp eye out for signs of Hiccup Imp infestation. She was beginning to doubt her conclusion that the Imp was what Phobos and Deimos had warned her about, as she had not seen any further signs of it manifesting, at least thus far. Without really paying the thought much heed, she reflected that it seemed to be harder to spot things like that these days; it was like there was, somehow, more "interference" — background noise — around than there had been several years before, when as a child she first learned to see beyond the mundane physical layer of reality.

She stopped again at a street corner, under a huge old tree. Something had caught her attention, but what? She absently noted that the tree seemed unusually strong in chi, for something that wasn't particularly venerated or otherwise focussed upon. _Ah, there it is!_ she thought with satisfaction. The tree had a very minor kami, in Western terms a _genius loci,_ living amongst its roots and branches. With a preoccupied air, she bobbed a brief courtesy bow towards it and continued on her way, trying vaguely to remember the last time she'd seen one that didn't live in a shrine or sacred grove.

After a moment, she was struck by the realization that she _hadn't._ Ever! Her brow creased in puzzlement as she turned this over in her mind, trying to match it up somehow with that blasted Hiccup Imp's earlier appearance at the shrine. She couldn't see any connection, but somehow she was sure there was something significant in the fact that she'd encountered two unusual instances of the supernatural in as many hours. _Hmmm… come to think of it, there's some kind of trend there,_ she decided. The further back she plumbed her memories, the fewer supernatural entities she could remember seeing around. She had to wonder — had she simply got better at noticing the things as time went on, or were they really becoming more common?

She resolved to ask Ami about it as soon as she arrived, and increased her pace. She wasn't sure it was relevant, but she knew from the ravens that _something_ weird was going on, and she didn't want to risk missing it.

* * *

Back at the Minato Zoo, Kuno Tatewaki was encountering something of a problem with reality. He stood at the break in the hedge where two paths met and stared in disbelief at the crowd in front of him… every single member of which, without exception, possessed a head of vividly and unambiguously red hair. "Pig… tailed… Girl?" he mumbled weakly, trying to search for a familiar face in the sea of unfamiliar peasants. Since he'd always tended to focus more on girl-Ranma's hair and effortlessly sexy curviness, which was part of the reason he'd never noticed Ranma's face didn't change much between forms, he was having difficulties.

"I SHALL TRIUMPH THIS TI— what in the…!" Kodachi stumbled to a halt behind her brother, momentarily speechless. "What is the meaning of this⁈" she snapped after recovering, irritated at herself for gaping like a commoner.

"I do not know!" replied Tatewaki, with unusual directness. "I see a few people with pigtails, but none of them is the right one…" He was having real trouble making any kind of sense of this.

Neither of them noticed a banner hung over a nearby decorative gate. It read:

WELCOME INTERNATIONAL MEMBERS  
of the  
**RED-HEADED LEAGUE**  
East Asian Chapter, Local 14  
_Sherlock Holmes luncheon located in the Garden Pavilion_

* * *

Tuxedo Mask lurked behind a chimney, and watched as his quarry stopped at the front door of a mid-sized prewar home across the street. Small details of its construction, and the nature of the surrounding neighbourhood, led him to guess that the building was divided into small apartments within, and that those apartments were probably lived in by retirees. After a few minutes of gesticulation on the front step, the old man disappeared alone into the building, returning after a few minutes with a bucket of hot water and a large number of other old men. They all watched with interest as the huge, betentacled Yeti-bull hybrid with absurdly undersized wings poured the bucket over its head, reverting to a nude young man. The old perverts grumbled disgustedly and hurriedly turned away, allowing Pantyhose-taro to dress himself, and then the whole group went inside again. Tuxedo Mask quickly noted down the address, date and time for Sailor Pluto to investigate, and after a few minutes of nothing more happening, turned to leave.

Neither the old men and Pantyhose-taro nor their tuxedo-clad observer across the street noticed the curtains twitching in the house next door, which was probably just as well. Sailor Moon and her husband had been disturbed enough to learn there was a group of dirty old men after _her_ underwear… they really didn't need to know that a parallel group of dirty old women was plotting to get _his_ undies as well.

* * *

Meanwhile, despite near-crippling levels of embarrassment, the four girls on Ranma's bed had managed to explain the more important concepts behind masturbation to him.

"…So you see, Ranma, almost everyone does it at least a little. It doesn't make you a pervert unless you start doing it in public, okay?" Haruka was blushing so hard she thought her face would catch fire. Over the years of her posing as a male, she'd cracked her share of bawdy jokes with the guys at the racetrack, but Ranma was so much more… well, hardly _innocent,_ but disarmingly naïve — and Hotaru was old enough now that she needed to hear it too. Her own daughter! No car race was _ever_ this hard.

Ranma looked a bit shell-shocked as he tried to assimilate what he'd just learned. After a few minutes, logical connections started to be made in his mind, and he got even redder, looking out the corners of his eyes at the girls on either side of him. He tried to speak, but ended up with a minor coughing fit instead.

"What is it, Ranma-san?" asked Ami cautiously. She was sure she couldn't take much more of this level of embarrassment. At least she'd outgrown the hives this type of thing used to bring her out in.

"I, um, doesthatmeanYOUalldoittoo?" he blurted nervously.

Michiru had by this point passed through "embarrassed" and emerged in some outwardly relaxed state on the other side, her mind shielding itself through an unbreakable conviction that This Conversation Was Not Happening And She Therefore Did Not Need To Worry About It. "We sure do!" she answered cheerfully. "Sometimes Haruka and I help each other, too. That's part of being lovers," she added with a Mona Lisa smile. Haruka gave her a surprised look, not expecting her always elegant girlfriend to speak so bluntly about this sort of thing, especially when she'd been so flustered by it earlier.

Hotaru, still too embarrassed to get up and flee, tried to plug her ears with her fingers. This was _way_ too much information about her adoptive parents.

Ranma froze, flushing so darkly now that his face turned almost black. "Erp!"

Michiru looked quizzically at him. "What's wrong?"

He twitched in place, seemingly too embarrassed to move. Finally, Haruka took pity and said, "How 'bout you whisper it in my ear? That way you don't need to say it out loud." She leaned down and listened patiently to his awkward mumbling. "Ah, well, that's normal too," she said carefully. "You're 17 and male — almost ANYTHING involving girls and their 'parts' should get you, ah, excited like that."

Ranma looked hopeful but skeptical. How could anything like this be acceptable? Most of his fiancées would have booted him through the ceiling for being a pervert on much slighter provocation. The alternative was possibly even more disturbing; Shampoo, for instance, would have looked at him the way he tended to look at large amounts of free food, and probably followed it up with getting entirely too close to him. _There's that "personal space" stuff again,_ he thought fleetingly.

"Oh, so that's what you're having trouble with!" said Michiru with a brilliant smile, still in heavy denial that any of this was really happening. It was strangely liberating. The smile turned a bit naughty. "How do you feel about THIS, then?" she asked, sweeping a startled but pleased Haruka into a toe-curling kiss. The two were lost to the others for almost a full minute — the conversation, while downright mortifying to participate in, had gotten all five of them pretty turned on. When they eventually surfaced, they found Hotaru and Ami staring in puzzlement at the hunched-over form of Ranma, who had gone deathly pale.

"What happened?" asked Haruka, surprised.

"I, I'm not sure!" stammered Ami. "I tried to put a hand on his shoulder to steady him, but he just got worse!"

"Again! It happened again!" choked out Ranma, hunched over his lap and staring in fascinated horror at the floor. "Twice! Now my boxers are all goopy!" They would HAVE to call him a pervert now. He felt so dirty. It hadn't helped when Ami had touched his shoulder; she was pretty in her own right, and her short blue hair reminded him of Akane.

"Eeep!" squeaked Ami, realizing after a moment why he must have twitched so hard when she touched him. Still, somewhere under the miles-deep flood of embarrassed chagrin, she felt oddly proud of being able to make a good-looking boy react like that. This thought was immediately dog-piled by her subconscious before she really became aware of it.

"Oh, is that all? Sounds normal enough to me!" said Michiru happily, smiling broadly at nothing in particular. None of that inconvenient "reality" stuff in here, no sirree.

Seeing that everyone else was having a bit of trouble coping with this latest incident, Haruka sighed and took over the discussion. "I guess you're still a bit easily excited, what with you being new to all this and so on. You'll probably get less hair-triggered over the next little while, as you get used to it all. I think we've covered all the stuff that needed covering — why don't you go have a shower to clean up?"

Ami dragged her thoughts back into some kind of order and confirmed Haruka's suppositions. "Yes, your 'parts' are definitely working properly in your boy form, at least," she agreed. "While you're in there, you should probably try to reach an," she coughed nervously, "orgasm in your girl form as well, just to make sure."

"Just make sure you clean that stuff off before you turn girl, otherwise you might get yourself pregnant!" Michiru chimed in cheerfully — by this point, she was feeling very lightheaded.

Hotaru, Ranma and Ami all went bug-eyed and proceeded to pass out, having received one shocking idea too many for the day.

"Nice one, love — I think you broke them," observed Haruka with some surprise. She wouldn't have thought it was actually possible to knock someone out through embarrassment. "…Love?" She looked back at the unexpectedly silent Michiru and discovered that her lover had finally gotten lightheaded enough to lose consciousness herself, so she was no longer with them either. "I see," she sighed, and began to move her limp companions to more comfortable positions on Ranma's borrowed bed.

* * *

Back at the zoo, the situation was deteriorating. Tatewaki had had, for lack of a more accurate term, a brainwave. He may not have been certain precisely what his Pig-Tailed Goddess' face looked like, but he knew exactly what her glorious bosom felt like! Hadn't he enfolded her in his manly arms on so wonderfully many joyous occasions? The fact that she always screamed and smashed him across town right afterwards was surely just her way of playing hard to get.

Suiting action to thought, he immediately began seeking out and embracing teenaged, redheaded girls of approximately the right height. "Oh, my poor pig-tailed girl! When did your lovely breasts shrink so?"

"EEEEK! HEEELP! YOU **SICKO!**" _WHAM!_

Kodachi looked on in disbelief, and smacked her face into her palm. "I'm not going NEAR this one," she growled, showing unexpected good sense, and immediately left the area.

Meanwhile, due to concussed double vision, Tatewaki had accidentally grabbed a large, burly man, and was being beaten violently into the ground by him and everyone else who'd seen the Kuno scion in action. The lone zookeeper on scene decided the "indiscriminate molester" was only getting his just desserts, and calmly walked away to call for security.

* * *

.

* * *

END PART SIX

_Latest revision as of Sat. 2008/04/19_

Thanks are due to my most excellent wife for her help with supporting characters, such as the God of Perversion, the Cosmic Justice Gnome (neither of those yet shown), and the Hiccup Imp. Oh, and the "No corpse, no foul" line, too.

The concept of Ranma's own semen getting her pregnant, however astronomically improbable such an event would be given the way I've used the idea here, is lifted straight from a classic Ranma ½ fic by Gary Kleppe. It had the rather improbably overextended name of _Hearts and Minds: Prelude Ten: Saotome Ranma: Lili's Child,_ and even after all these years, it can still be found on the author's website at «http://www(dot)garykleppe(dot)org/comics(dot)html».


	7. Chapter 7

**Permutation**

A Ranma ½ / Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon crossover  
© 2004–2009 by gsteemso

Chapter Seven

Not my characters — Ranma ½ belongs to Takahashi Rumiko and Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon belongs to Takeuchi Naoko.

* * *

.

* * *

Saotome Ranma opened his eyes. They felt all crusty, and for some reason he was really thirsty. Suiting action to thought, he began to sit up on what he now recognized as the guest bed those nice Sailor girls had lent him, when two very alarming facts slammed into his awareness. Not only was he surrounded by sleeping girls, but some sicko had apparently glued his boxers to his privates and then dressed him again! _GYAAAHHHH!_ he thought, jolting rigid in a blind panic. _…Wait a minute, it's Ami and the others. We were just talking and I— eeeep. So that's why my boxers are…_ He flushed bright red, then went deathly pale again as he remembered the suggestion that had put him out for the past few minutes. His brain threatened to go offline again. _Can't think about it!_ he told himself frantically. _Think about food instead! Rice balls, sashimi, okonomiyaki, octopus rolls…_

His brain still shielding itself (with the strength of large bank vaults) from the memory of his most recent conversation, Ranma carefully picked his way off of the bed without jostling any of the three girls who were also resting across it. He slipped out and headed tensely for the bathroom, where he stripped as quickly as he could and started the shower using only the hot water tap. He waited until the bathroom was filling with thick clouds of steam before daring to get wet, and began frantically washing off the dried… secretions, which to his dismay were becoming slimy again as they soaked up the water, apparently being restored to "good as new" condition. _Get it OFF me!_ he screamed to himself. _Pregna— preg— NOT GONNA HAPPEN!_

Ranma was aware that he didn't really know much about this whole pregnancy thing. Unfortunately, he knew even less that was _correct,_ not that he realized the fact.

He'd picked up the usual whispered misinformation from the other boys in his elementary school days, but he had somehow managed to miss every health class his many subsequent schools had ever held — and, of course, he had never encountered much popular entertainment while out on his training trip, so he'd never been subjected to the constant barrage of sexual imagery the average TV-watching urbanite had to tolerate in their formative years. Also, Genma always had such an intemperate reaction to the whole subject of girls that the young Ranma soon learned never to mention them, and after a while seldom even thought of them. As a result of all this, he was trying to deal with a pair of 16-year-old bodies using, at best, a ten-year-old child's concept of how the embarrassing bits worked.

He'd seen animals mating often enough during the training trip, but never linked this behaviour to human reproduction. Heck, he hadn't really linked it to animal reproduction. In more than one village they'd stayed at, the only dogs allowed to run loose were very obviously male — and, dogs being dogs, that hadn't stopped them from mounting one another whenever they felt like it. The young Ranma had concluded that various animals' occasional habit of standing or laying on one another's backs was just some incomprehensible peculiarity of nature. He'd never connected the act with so much as the animals' gender, let alone puppies. Back then, he'd decided he could puzzle it out later, after he became the greatest martial artist in the world; at the time, he'd had training to get back to.

Here and now, Ranma had taken what the girls had told him, connected it with miscellaneous other facts from his life, and reached some very alarming conclusions. _This horrible, sticky, goopy stuff that came spewing out of my… uhh…_ thing _seems to be the key to it all. Michiru said it could get me pregnant when I'm a girl._ "I'm not even a real girl! I'm just a guy with a curse!" he muttered nervously. _That has to make the stuff horrifically powerful. It certainly smells weird enough to be that strong._ He furrowed his brow in thought.

Once Ranma had turned eleven, Genma had begun exhorting the boy to stay away from girls at all costs, because they could tangle up a guy's life and stop him from advancing in the Art. Ranma had never quite understood this, especially considering how seldom he met girls anyway, but with how adamant ol' Pops always was, he'd figured there must be something serious to it. Now that he'd discovered what part of a guy was used to get a woman pregnant, it all made a horrible kind of sense. The goopy stuff would, apparently, come boiling out of a guy whether he wanted it to or not; and, judging by everyone's attitude to boy-girl contact, its ability to make a girl pregnant must be very potent. Lacking any kind of mechanical knowledge of the sex act, Ranma understandably concluded the goopy stuff must be able to work _just by its touching a girl_ — any part of a girl, from hair to toenails!

Pretty scary stuff on its own, to say the least — but in Ranma's case, it loomed far worse. Not only was there a risk of him contaminating a girl with his own goopy stuff, but his own or even _other people's_ goopy stuff _might affect his girl side!_ The very idea was enough to seriously endanger Ranma's sanity, especially as he thought through the implications of the matter over the course of his shower.

As it abruptly sank in just what he was apparently facing, Ranma let out a girlish squeak. Wide-eyed and trembling with stress, he sank to his heels in the tub. He clung, by adamantine reflex, to the confines of the near-scalding jet of water; to be female while the goopy stuff was even in the same building would be unthinkable just now.

Still… "I'm Saotome Ranma, and I never lose when it matters. I _will_ find a way forward!" Unfortunately, this bold declaration was just loud enough to drown out the sound of someone knocking timidly on the bathroom door.

* * *

Haruka came back towards the guest room with a blanket, which it had taken her some time to find in her and Michiru's bedroom closet. The others had seemed a bit chilled after passing out. "Did one of you say something?" she asked as she entered, looking at where she'd left the others laying sideways across the bed. "Hmm." The middle of the bed was conspicuously Ranmaless. Cocking her head, she could just make out the sound of running water. _Huh, guess he took our advice._

A small but sudden movement at the foot of the bed drew her attention. Ami seemed to be having a very strange dream. The blue-haired genius' limbs — and also her nostrils — twitched slightly, and her face wore an expression that was mildly hungry, eager and tense all at the same time. Her breath was coming faster, and she seemed to be unconsciously trying to cuddle up to the departed Ranma.

Ami made a faint breathy sound and rolled over onto where Ranma had been, awakening in what looked like complete bewilderment when there was no one there. "Errh…" she mumbled blearily, with an unmistakable tinge of disappointment.

"That's so cute! Our little bookworm is growing up!" Haruka teased gently, pleased to see the shy girl having such an enjoyably uninhibited rest. With an effort, she refrained from asking which of Ranma's two forms Ami's dreams had featured, reasoning that such teasing and innuendo was best postponed to when the others arrived for the meeting. That way there'd be lots of witnesses.

Ami blushed scarlet. Mumbling excuses, she ducked out the door and scampered towards the bathroom, feeling an urgent need to be somewhere private to recover her composure. She was disappointed to find the door closed. She gave it a few timid knocks; was someone already in there? With the blood still roaring through her ears in embarrassment, she couldn't really tell, but she didn't hear any kind of obvious answer and she _really_ needed to hide somewhere for a few minutes.

Snatching urgently at the knob, she decided the door must have blown shut or something, and darted inside.

* * *

In the shower, Ranma had successfully scraped all the goopy stuff off himself, despite it having set like some sort of creepily sticky rubber cement due to having congealed in the hot water. He was still unable to act on Ami's advice to try for an orgasm from the female perspective, as he couldn't quite bring himself to risk switching to girl form just yet, but he had turned the water temperature down enough that he wasn't getting mild first-degree burns any more. He was still entirely absorbed in devising possible defences against contamination by pregna— preg— _problem_-inducing goopy stuff, and decided he'd worry about girl-orgasms later on, if he ever got around to it. It wasn't like he could imagine ever needing the capability, after all.

His mind made up, he squared his shoulders, shut off the shower and whipped the curtain back, all in one smooth motion… and found himself looking straight at Ami's back, as she tidily shut the bathroom door after entering.

There was a crowded moment as she realized the bathroom was awfully humid to be unoccupied and spun around to see why, only to come face to face with a flabbergasted and extremely nude Ranma. Despite her best intentions, her attention was immediately drawn to his midsection, the entirety of which was highlighted in bright red from scrubbing and the hot water.

They both froze for a brief, horrible eternity, exchanging shocked looks, before hastily doing a synchronized about-face that would have done a dance troupe proud.

"Sorry—!" they choked out in unison, Ami frantically groping for the doorknob and its promise of blessed escape, while Ranma fought his conditioning and tried not to shrink into a ball again. Ami found the handle and fled just as Ranma resealed the shower curtain. They each slumped against the nearest walls in reaction as the door banged shut.

* * *

A few minutes later, Ranma's head poked cautiously out of the bathroom. Seeing no one nearby, he gathered himself and strode out wearing a towel, in search of clean clothes. Haruka hadn't thought to set any out, being more immediately concerned with finding a blanket for the others, but since they had all one at a time recovered and fled as quickly as dignity would allow, he was able to get some more from what he'd been lent without any further incidents.

A few minutes later, he found Ami downstairs. "Eep!" she squeaked, turning purple with embarrassment as her mind immediately flashed to the last view she'd had of him.

"Um, doc, I need advice!" Ranma blurted before the moment could get any more awkward. It seemed reasonable to him that an aspiring doctor would know how to defend against things a human body did, no matter how gross or unrequested.

_Great,_ she winced internally. _Just what I needed._ "Um, what with, Ranma-san?" she asked carefully. She was really hoping this wouldn't turn out as awkwardly as the last go 'round.

"The goopy stuff! If it can get people p-p-pre— Argh. PREGNANT, I need a way to protect myself from it! What do other people do?"

She gave him an odd look. "It only gets you pregnant if someone puts it inside your, uh, girl parts, okay Ranma?"

"Really⁈ Oh gods, what a relief! I was gettin' really worried about it. Far as I knew, it just had to touch you!"

Ami stared. "Uh, how long ago was the last health class you sat at school?"

" 'Health class?' What's that?"

"Good grief! No wonder you're so confused about this stuff. Come on, mister, you need to hear the whole story from a real doctor, and as soon as possible! Good news for you, though, my mom should be able to help. She's a proper doctor at the hospital, not just a student like me, and she can tell you everything you need to know." Ami grabbed Ranma's arm and dragged him to see Michiru.

A few words of explanation later, the two of them had used the Disguise Pen (still in Ranma's keeping from the night before) to hide his appearance behind the seeming of a nondescript schoolboy, and were headed to Ami's apartment to collect her mother.

* * *

Happosai yawned and sat up slowly amidst a heap of bras, absent-mindedly dislodging some lacy black panties from over his left ear with one hand. _Ergh, what did I drink last night? I ache like I went full-out against Cologne-chan, Pantyhose-taro and Ranma all at once, but it's a good ache… except for the part in my… What the hell?_ His eyes shot open wide, and he stared down at himself in shock. "WHY AM I FEMALE⁈"

* * *

Pantyhose-taro followed the group of shrivelled old men into the apartment house. The one he'd first met, who had introduced himself in passing as Kenjiro, led them into an apartment on the ground floor and closed the door after the last pervert had filed into the living room.

Kenjiro appeared to be in charge of the meeting, and immediately began by calling to order "the Glorious Liberators of Magical Panties."

_Their acronym is "G.L.o.M.P."?_ Pantyhose-taro raised an eyebrow quizzically.

"Now then, young fellow, why don't you tell these fine gentlemen what you told me?" Kenjiro requested happily.

"Uh. Well, OK," he said, at something of a loss. Finally he just blurted the gist of his story out in one go: "I need a set of magical-girl panties to bribe an old pervert into changing the horrible name he saddled me with at my birth. According to the traditions of my village, only he can change it — but he has so far refused."

"Gosh. Sounds like quite the noble quest you've brought us, young fellow. Were you really a tentacle monster before young Kenji here gave you that bucket of hot water?" one of the oldest of the old perverts asked appraisingly.

"Huh? Well, I was a yeti-bull-crane-eel-octopus hybrid. I don't think of myself as a monster but I did have tentacles, if that helps. Oh, and I can fly thanks to the crane part."

"Oh ah?" The old man looked thoughtful, and turned to the even older old man next to him. Pantyhose-taro couldn't quite hear what they said to one another, but within moments there was a small huddle around the two senior perverts who'd spoken up, muttering excitedly and making elaborate gestures.

Finally, "Well, maybe it'll work, at that!" said one of them cheerfully, looking at Pantyhose-taro. "How about it, young fellow — will you help us with our cunning plan to get magical panties?"

"Maybe," he replied cautiously. "What's the plan? I don't feel like getting roasted by magical fire or whatever if it goes sour."

"Makes sense," another old man agreed. "It's really quite ingenious in its simplicity though — all we have to do is distribute walkie-talkies, spread out around areas of frequent sightings, and radio you to swoop in in your tentacled form when we spot one on her own. You'd grab her, extract the magical panties, and run like hell to the nearest one of us, throwing her as far as you can in the other direction to slow her up. We'd each have a kit consisting of hot water, a set of shorts for you, and a lead-lined box to hide the goods. She comes pelting after you and all there is in front of her is a young man training as a runner, and his friendly old neighbour having a quiet word. We're away scot-free and we all get what we're after!"

"That actually sounds like it might work," agreed Pantyhose-taro — rather against his better judgement; but a potential end to his years of torment had finally come into view, and by gods he wasn't about to stop now.

"Wait, wait," said an old pervert who'd hitherto held his tongue. "If this young fellow takes away the magical panties, what are we supposed to do for OUR collections?" The others all fell silent at this. It was so obvious in hindsight — _one_ set of magical panties wasn't going to be enough to satisfy _two_ groups of panty-collectors.

Pantyhose-taro didn't fancy taking on more than one magical girl at a time; he may have had 14 limbs and an eel for a tail, but however good he was at dividing his concentration, he only had one brain to direct them with. Fortunately, he wasn't concerned with the fate of the panties after they would persuade that accursed Happosai to change his name. "Why don't you just join forces with the old… fellow I'm going to bribe with them? You'd probably get along great." A shiver ran down his spine at the thought of what this group might achieve with Happosai added to its number, but he wasn't bothered; let that fag-boy Ranma worry about it after he himself went home to China with a decent name.

"Who is he, anyway? I'm surprised we haven't met him already, if he'd like these panties as much as you say."

"He's an indestructible, hundred-plus-year-old holy terror, cursed the world around as… _Happosai."_ Pantyhose-taro grimaced.

He could not have achieved a greater reaction by saying that the God of Perversion was parked outside in a 1970s pimpmobile and wanted to address the faithful.

"You… you actually know The Master? _Personally⁈"_ Pantyhose-taro could _hear_ the capital letters in the question as the awestruck old men stared at him.

With a horrible sinking feeling, he replied, "Yes." A thought struck him and he brightened again. "Help me and I'll take you to him!"

"Done!" the old men chorused, as one pervert.

* * *

At the Hikawa Shrine, the group was just getting settled. Of those who were arriving earlier — Mamoru and Setsuna had sent word they would be delayed — the last to arrive were Ami, Ranma, and the unexpected addition of Dr. Mizuno. The good doctor thought the Senshi were a group of friends Ami studied with, and of late had occasionally dropped by a few minutes early to help with their homework before taking Ami home, so the others weren't too upset at the extra presence. It just meant they'd have to be careful not to mention things like demons, long-dead kingdoms on other planets and talking cats. Since they were only here to help Ranma today, that shouldn't be insurmountable.

"Hello, everyone," she greeted them. "Today Ami's asked me to give you all a refresher course on your health classes. I'm not sure why she picked today, but luckily I had the day off, so I'm happy to help."

Ami broke in smoothly, "We needed this today because poor Ranma-san here has never sat one in his life, and… well, you'll have to see this to believe it, but…"

"I have a curse that turns me into a girl," said Ranma mechanically. He hated this part of meeting people.

"Excuse me?" the doctor asked with an eyebrow raised.

"Like this!" said Usagi cheerfully, pouring a cup of cold water over him.

"In-incredible!" Dr. Mizuno gasped, collapsing into the nearest empty seat. The boy she'd walked back here with seemed to have changed his clothes and hairstyle while she wasn't looking — the disguise pen at work, though of course she didn't realize it — and now he'd apparently shed a substantial amount of both mass and height at a mere application of water! And, she had to admit, those curves the boy now had certainly looked female. "How is this even possible?" It contradicted everything she thought she knew about physics — and quite a bit of what she thought she knew about anatomy, she reflected wryly.

"Cursed springs of Jusenkyo, very tragic story," said Ranma bitterly. "I've had this… condition for about a year now."

"More to the point, she's been using what is basically two different sixteen-year-old bodies with only an elementary school understanding of how either one works," picked up Ami. "She really needs your help, Mom. I didn't want to risk missing something important by trying to explain it myself."

"I'm not sure I follow completely," said the doctor. "Shouldn't he have at least a basic idea what to expect from his male body?"

"Uh. Not really," Ami replied nervously. She really didn't want to revisit the embarrassing events of the morning. She settled for saying, "He seems to have recently come into the mental effects of, um, puberty all at once."

"Ah? Unusual. Well, not to worry, Ranma-kun, I can tell you what you need to know." She collected herself enough to stand up again, and pulled out some rather graphic pictorial aids. "Since you're a girl right now, we'll start with that body…"

Ranma suddenly realized that a pretty older woman was about to tell her, in embarrassing detail, all about girl parts while she was surrounded by pretty girls her own age. The fact that she was a girl herself was for some reason not very comforting. "Eeep!"

* * *

A small black pig dragging an enormous backpack paused in its efforts. Where the hell was it NOW? It idly noted the odd reddish-purple colour of the sky and the strangely spire-shaped mountains on the horizon, before shrugging and resuming its slow progress. At least those stupid overgrown lizard things with all the teeth had decided to leave it alone again.

It is worth noting that, several years later when the movie _Jurassic Park_ came out, Ryoga would mistake it for a particularly badly made documentary.

A beautiful six-limbed woman with antennæ, four breasts and green skin looked up in surprise from her picnic as the backpack scraped through a patch of low bushes without apparent means of propulsion. "What in— Oh, it's Mr. Space Alien again! He's so funny." She picked up a warm, squashy, fist-sized object from in her picnic hamper and tossed it overhand into the shrubbery at the leading edge of the backpack. There was a wet _splat_ noise as the hot-drink balloon burst over Ryoga's porcine head, and he erupted in human form from beneath the bracken.

"AAIIIIEEEEE!" he shrieked, his eyes crossing, as he frantically tried to rescue his newly endangered dangly bits from the scratchy bushes. He may have been significantly toughened up from the Breaking Point training, but to all things there are exceptions.

"Oops! I forgot how spiky those bushes are! Sorry, Mr. Space Alien." The verdant woman watched with interest to see what the crazy alien would do next. She didn't know where he came from or how he managed the shapeshifting trick, but every couple of months she would run across him in the wilderness here near her home, and he was invariably entertaining.

Ryoga muttered direly to himself. "Ranma, you will pay for this humiliation!" He squinted out of the corner of his eyes and confirmed that, yes, the mutant nymph or whatever she was was still there and watching him with three wide eyes. He didn't know why she never seemed to say anything, but at least she was keeping her distance this time. The first time he'd run across her, while en route from China back to Tokyo, she had been bathing nude in a stream not two feet in front of him, and Ryoga had nearly died of blood loss from the resulting nosebleed. Fortunately, he'd fainted forwards into the stream, and the four-armed woman had been able to rescue his piglet form before he was washed away.

* * *

Ranma's eyes bulged. "I might start bleeding from WHERE⁈"

* * *

Konatsu was having unworthy thoughts. He may have felt like a girl and thought of himself as a girl, but ultimately he wasn't one, and his libido reflected the fact. He was utterly devoted to Ukyo, but Ranma's mother had somehow manœuvred him into being engaged to Ranma's girl form, which was wonderful because it would let him be in a relationship with Ukyo, but at the same time tortuous because boy-Ranma came as part of the package. Konatsu could deal with that — he had after all been raised as the lowest-ranking girl at the Red Hot Kunoichi Tea House, with all that that implied — but he didn't want to cheat on Ukyo-sama.

It was a problem.

Especially since girl-Ranma was so sexy, and if both Konatsu and Ukyo were engaged to her then a three-way suddenly became not only possible but probable— Aargh, aargh, unworthy thoughts…

Konatsu was sure that good girls didn't think like this. Unfortunately, his imagination kept going back to the idea.

The transvestite smacked himself in the face with one of Ukyo's throwing spatulas and tried harder to focus on his restaurant duties, duties which in no way involved heaving bosoms or long, luscious legs— Aargh, aargh, aargh…

Konatsu was, depending how you looked at it, having either a very good or a very bad day.

* * *

"The idea that you might become pregnant is very upsetting to you, isn't it, Ranma-kun? I think we need to talk about that some more." Dr. Mizuno watched the redhead carefully.

"Awk! Uh, do we have to?"

"Yes, I think we should. It's something all girls grow up expecting might happen some day, but it must have come as a terrible shock to someone raised to have a very macho self-image like you were."

"Well, yeah. I'm a guy! Maybe I'm a girl part of the time, but that doesn't mean I want to be one for long enough to have a baby. And what was all that business about pregnancy hormones? I don't even wanna THINK about what that would do to my guy side!" In typical fashion, Ranma was more worried about her guy side looking girly than she was about the otherwise unthinkable idea of bringing a new life into the world from her own muscular belly. Actually, she kept having a nagging feeling that she should come up with an isometric exercise regime for all the new voluntary muscles she'd just learned were located Down There. Getting groin-punched hurt a lot for girls too, not just for guys, so maybe if she muscled up that area she could get some immunity? She began testing theoretical approaches at the back of her mind as she listened to the doctor speak.

"Well, I can tell you that you're a lot more worried about it than you need to be. Since you've yet to experience an actual period, it seems pretty clear that your fertility cycle gets reset every time you switch into girl form. That means you'd have to stay female for at least two and probably three months just to start menstruating, and it just so happens that a girl's first one or two periods don't actually involve any egg cell coming out. That means you'd have to be locked as a girl for _at least_ four months — maybe as long as six — just to get to the point where it would even be physically possible for you to get pregnant."

"Really?" Ranma perked up a bit, but the assembled girls could all see that she was still fairly stressed out.

"I don't think that's all of what's bothering you, though, is it, Ranma-kun? I think you're just as upset by what you'd have to do to GET pregnant, at least by traditional means."

Ranma was silent for a time. "You have no idea what it's like," she whispered. "If you suddenly found yourself with guy parts where they had no business being and all sorts of perverted women suddenly throwing themselves at you, would you want to even think about that?" She shuddered. "I wish all those perverts would leave me out of their sick fantasies."

"You're right, I do have no idea what it's like. I do know that it's something you're going to have to deal with as long as you have a girl's body in there somewhere, though. Look at Haruka-kun here. She doesn't ever want to be touched by a man in that way, either, but she has to understand at some level that it's theoretically possible."

"It's true," agreed Haruka. "With one thing and another, I'm not likely to ever have to worry about it, but I have to acknowledge the possibility or I'd go crazy if it ever did happen."

"Suppose she and I wanted a child of our own, besides Hotaru-chan I mean?" asked Michiru. "If we had a choice I would bear it, but sometimes medical problems mean that turns out not to be an option. If you marry one of those girls and settle down, what will you do if she suffers some accident that leaves her unable to carry a baby to term? If you could take on that role for her, wouldn't you rather consider it than condemn yourself to a life without children?"

Ranma looked badly shaken at that idea. Quite obviously, the possibility had never occurred to her. It was hardly surprising given her total ignorance of matters relating to childbirth prior to this conversation.

"That's it exactly, Ranma-kun," continued the doctor. "You're not likely ever to get intimate with a man, and that's just fine with anyone who cares about what YOU think. But there are other situations where you might actually want to get pregnant, and they don't have to involve… doing 'that'."

"I think you'd make a great mom!" enthused Usagi, making what may have been the least helpful suggestion possible.

"GYAAAAAH!" screamed Ranma.

There was a confused and very crowded moment.

"Oh, dear." Dr. Mizuno blinked, and stood her stack of distressingly graphic pictorial aids back up again. "Makoto-kun, you're an athlete — could you go and catch her, please?"

* * *

Happosai, meanwhile, was coming to terms with… her… new experiences earlier that morning.

Unexpectedly, the rejuvenated pervert found she wasn't terribly upset, despite this previously inconceivable turn of events. She just felt too mellow. "Wow…" she mumbled distractedly. _Who knew women had it that good?_

After a few minutes, she'd pulled enough of her personality back together to begin considering her new options. How best to take advantage of the new opportunities available to her? "Let's see, when I'm a man I can still chase nature's bounty of pretty girls, and collect their silky darlings. I guess that means when I'm a woman I should… try to feel up studly young men and collect their perversely smelly jockstraps? Hmm, something sounds a bit off about that, but I'm sure I'll get the hang of it as I go."

As you may have surmised from listening in on her thought process, Happosai wasn't adapting quite as well as the currently-a-woman believed, but at least she was making an effort.

* * *

Makoto didn't have to go far. She found Ranma in the courtyard, hugging herself for warmth on the shady side of the shrine building, though the morning wasn't particularly cool out. "Ranma-kun?" she asked tentatively. "Are you all right?"

The stressed-out redhead, still with her arms wrapped protectively around herself, turned a burdened gaze on her. "Yeah, I guess. It's just a bit much, you know?"

"Bearing in mind how crazy-unlikely it would be for you in particular, would it be so bad to be a mommy?" asked Makoto quietly, tilting her head to one side.

Ranma blinked, and stood up a bit straighter. "I guess I did kinda overreact, eh?" She snorted a brief, mostly humourless laugh and relaxed her arms from their death-grip around her abdomen. "Really, I guess it wouldn't be THAT bad, but I don't ever want to find out first hand."

"I can't imagine you'd ever have to," smiled Makoto reassuringly, ushering her gently back into the building.

* * *

The rest of the instructional session passed with relative smoothness, up until the end. Dr. Mizuno had finished talking about female puberty and then gone over what Ranma could expect from her male body, to the accompaniment of much blushing, giggling and a considerable number of double-entendres from the other girls, not all of whom had previously heard about that side of things. She finished up by confirming what little Haruka, Hotaru, Michiru and Ami had told Ranma that morning about masturbation and wet dreams, but was a bit puzzled by the slightly cross-eyed expression Ranma was developing towards the finish. "Uh, Ranma-kun? Are you paying complete attention here?"

The girl in question gave a guilty start. "Yes! Er, mostly." She looked sheepish.

"What would you be thinking about besides what we're discussing? This is important stuff, you know."

"Nothing! Nothing important. It's just, you've told me about all these muscles I never knew I had, so while I've been memorizing what you're telling us, I've also been trying to figure out ways to exercise them."

A rather peculiar expression passed across everyone else's face. "…Exercise them?" echoed Haruka faintly, in tones of mild disbelief.

Dr. Mizuno coughed uncomfortably. "Er… the only new muscles we've mentioned are in your 'girl parts'… you do realize that the only reason to exercise _those_ muscles is to have better sex with them?"

Ranma turned a brilliant red, her eyes opening wide. "OH! Ah. Er. Whoops?"

* * *

During all this, Tuxedo Mask had returned bearing the information that a group of old perverts were mobilizing to pilfer the Sailors' hypothetical underwear. (He didn't know if the Sailor uniform actually came with any or not, as his wife Usagi had always been just as eager to get intimate as he was. That meant she always ended up getting frustrated and simply willing the whole works to disappear before he could ever find a way past the magically-armoured leotard.) He'd dropped his transformation to return to being just Chiba Mamoru, and narrowly avoided walking in on the medical lecture series in progress within the house. He was now loitering — "hiding" was too strong a word — with Artemis at the farthest corner of the shrine grounds, lest they also suffer the horror that had befallen Ranma.

* * *

Eventually, not even Dr. Mizuno could think of anything else to tell Ranma, so she made her goodbyes and left the girls at the shrine to hang out together for the rest of the day. Setsuna arrived as soon as the doctor had departed, appearing soundlessly outdoors behind Mamoru.

"It's safe now, she's gone," she said with a smirk.

Mamoru looked sheepish, and turned to go back inside.

Artemis gave her a sharp look around the once and future Prince of Earth's legs. "Sure, go ahead and laugh at us. You're just one girl among many in there. We'd have had no such help!"

Setsuna blinked, and realized that admitting she too had skipped the awkward half of the meeting would not help her save face. "Fair enough," she allowed with a calm smile, ushering the man and the Mau back towards the buildings.

Once everyone was settled again, Ranma having reverted to male in the interim in order to see better over the crowd of girls, Rei got the group's attention and began to speak. "I noticed something weird earlier, and Phobos and Deimos seem to back it up as something we need to worry about," she said bluntly. After a brief interlude wherein Ranma was brought up to speed on Sailor Mars' assistants, Rei told the assembled teens of her observations and the ravens' unusually literal warning.

After a brief pause while they all absorbed her words, everyone in the room swivelled to look expectantly at either Ami or Setsuna.

"Don't look at me," said the Time Guardian. "As far as I know we've got an easy ride until the Great Freeze starts messing everything up." She noticed Ranma's puzzled look and added, "I'll explain about that later, Ranma-kun." She wasn't looking forward to putting him through that; no one ever dealt easily with the knowledge that a disaster so great even the Sailors' combined magic couldn't shield everyone from it was looming in a few years. She actually felt it was humorous, in a darkly ironic way; various extradimensional horrors had been trying so hard to conquer the Earth in recent years, and yet any one of them would have been promptly wiped out by the coming cataclysm even if they'd succeeded. She made a mental note to look in the Gates later on and see if Ranma's added presence could help them save any more of the world's population. He may not have had any magic besides his curse (as far as she was aware), but he was still pretty powerful.

Ami was a bit more thoughtful in replying. "Well, I'll have to do some research and set the Mercury Computer to scan everything in range…" She trailed off into incomprehensible muttering for a moment, then said more decisively, "I should have something for you all in a few days."

The others accepted this as the best that could be done, and moved on to other things.

After some discussion of various trivial things like school assignments, Haruka remembered Ami's naughty dream from earlier and asked, in a seemingly innocent tone of voice, "So, Ami, were you dreaming of Ranma as a girl or as a boy when you were rolling around on his bed this morning?"

Ami froze, one eye bugging out and her hair sticking out at odd angles. "Glurk⁈" The shocked stares she was getting from everyone else didn't help her composure any.

"Oh, didn't I tell any of you about that?" grinned Haruka. "After they all passed out from Michiru suggesting Ranma could accidentally get himself pregnant, I left to get a blanket for them. When I came back, our little bookworm was having a naughty dream about Ranma, who'd already woken up and left to have a shower. You should have seen her expression when she rolled over onto him and he wasn't there. It was so CUUUUTE!" she gushed.

Ami gave her a look like a rabbit caught in the headlights of a semi tractor. Ranma was frozen to his seat with decidedly mixed emotions writ large across his face. After a brief pause, all the other girls spoke up at once, pressing Ami and Haruka for details. Mamoru and the two Mau kept to the back of the crowd, trying not to laugh out loud at Ranma's or Ami's expressions.

After an especially enthusiastic but shockingly personal question from Minako, Ami's patience snapped. "NO I WASN'T! And anyway, the bedsheet was covering his—" She froze, mortified, and refused to say another word.

Ranma was giving her a horrified look, mouthing the word "No…" over and over as he slowly shook his head from side to side in denial. Internally, all he could think was, "Oh GODS no, not another one, please!"

Setsuna cleared her throat a bit theatrically and, with some difficulty, gathered everyone's attention once more. "Well, as amusing as this is, we do have one last item to cover. Ranma's loony ex-associates seem to have worked themselves into a perfect state for trying his plan on them. I suggest that we go ahead with it tonight."

"Already?" said Ranma with some surprise, tremendously glad of the change in subject. "Geeze, that's kind of extreme even for them." He knew that the Nerima gang would sooner or later start leaping to bizarre conclusions, probably involving a maximum of embarrassment for him if anyone at school heard the rumours, but he was honestly a little shocked that they'd so easily — not to mention promptly — written him off as having gone permanently female in mind as well as body. Even under the influence of Ryoga's damned fishing rod of love, that time when Ranma had honestly worked hard to be a girl so that the Lost Boy might return her magically implanted affections, she had been something of a tomboy. _Not that anyone ever cared to notice,_ he grumbled inwardly. _"Pervert," my magnificent ass._

"I'd not have believed it if I hadn't been listening in person," agreed Setsuna.

"Who should go along to support him?" asked Ami.

"I'd suggest Usagi and the Guardian Soldiers," ventured Michiru. "One downside to this plan is the possibility of the media being attracted. Best not to risk having all of us in one place."

"I had another idea to tack on to this little performance of Ranma's," piped up Minako. "How's about we lead off by letting them catch a brief distant glimpse of girl-Ranma necking with a really manly guy, like Mamoru?"

"EWW! No way!" spluttered the aquatranssexual in question, a horrified expression on his face. He would have said more but words had temporarily failed him.

"I'm not wild about cheating on my wife with another guy, either," interjected Mamoru somewhat sourly. Yes, girl-Ranma was stunning, but knowing she wanted to kiss him exactly as little as he wanted to kiss her boy side was a very effective antidote to any potential attraction he might have felt.

"Well, as long as it's only acting… no one said the guy had to really be a guy, did they?" pointed out Haruka with a decidedly unfeminine leer.

Michiru shot a searching look at her lover, and pointed out a trifle too calmly, "As long as it looks convincing from a distance, it doesn't need to be a real kiss, either."

Haruka made a big show of snapping her fingers in disappointment, her smile shifting to something a lot less predatory and more good-humoured.

"Doesn't have to be a real kiss… Hum, that's… actually kind of a… really funny idea," admitted Ranma thoughtfully. "I'd pay good money to see a picture of their faces when they realize it's me."

"That's the spirit!" cheered Minako. In the background, the young Hotaru looked rather shocked at what was being plotted before her. "Now, here's how we can get a bunch of them together at a distance…" began Minako confidently.

* * *

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* * *

END PART SEVEN

_Latest revision as of Sat. 2008/10/18_

Thanks are due to my most excellent prereaders, including among others my lovely wife, and also to the disparate groups of suspicious characters at the **Temple of Ranma's Senshi Seifuku** C&C forum and **The Fanfiction Forum**'s Ranma section. The many-talented J. St. C. Patrick, who is a member of the first two groups, has also done a truly amazing set of illustrations for this story — see the fan art section of my website (the most current location of which should be in my author profile).

If anyone else wants to be a prereader, and can promise a turnaround time of less than a day per thousand words, I'd be very grateful — just drop me a line at «gsteemso(at)ficfan(dot)org». Thanks for reading!


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